Fallout 3 speedrun [DONE!!]

[Ewil]

About the GECK area:

1) If you hug walls you get much less radiation or even none at certain points.
2) When you wait for the container to open up, go to right corner, where you won't get any radiation at all.

[Skillface]

There's a hollowed out rock SE of Megaton that contains a Sniper Rifle and a Stealth Boy.

I forget the exact location, you may be able to find a video on YouTube of it.

[I Empire]

So, I got outside of the vault as a baby using that other guys video. Unfortunately, it looks like it will be nearly impossible to use this glitch because you walk incredibly slow and your Pip Boy is glitched beyond the point of use.

[Registryis4chumps]

Man, I wish I had some decent way to record footage so I could 1. Do a run 2. Record all of the unbelievable crap that happened while running today. Too bad my comp is way too weak to record anything, even on lowest graphics settings. I won't go into exteme detail, but I'll say that my first test run may have been perfect circumstances ruined by horrible gameplay, while today it was the opposite.
Somehow I was stupid enough in my first run to miss the med box right in front of you when you wake up as a 19 year old. It always had 10 stimpacks on easy. I'm too tired to see what it has on the other difficulties. The estimate of leaving the vault in 13 minutes seems very close, maybe even a little too fast, but then again I'm estimating myself in the amount of time I waste through mistakes.
When it comes to getting to Rivet City, going southeast through the ruined city areas rather than going east to the river then following it south is much more dangerous and unpredictable but I was able to kill a raider on one attempt (only took 3 bullets, didn't slow me down at all) and he yielded a very usefull 10mm submachine gun that did far more damage than the pistol (21 opposed to 9 I think) but still took the same ammo. I came in very handy in the Jef. Memorial, killing everything inside and then running back out took about 2 minutes as opposed to 4-5 in the last run, due in part to the submachine gun and my much higher Sm. Gun skill (both of the attemps were still far below fast as possible). Forgot to mention earlier, but there's theres a med box in the turret room that you should probably check at some point, especially on harder difficulties.)
So everything in the run was going rather smoothly until I have to escort Dr. Li to the tunnel. For some reason she starts running the complete opposite direction and BEGINS FIGHTING THE ENCLAVE WITH A KNIFE. I load a the autosave from coming out of the rotunda and this time SHE PICKS UP A HUNTING RIFLE OFF OF A DEAD SUPERMUTANT AND STARTS SHOOTING AT THE ENCLAVE, THEN SHE GETS TRAPPED IN THE FLEEING STANCE. I reload files about 10 more times before she cooperates, but only after I have to steal the hunting rifle off the supermutant so she won't take it and after I kill the enclave officer. I never had to do this in any of my other attemps/playthroughs. In the tunnels she seemed much more frightened after the computer part, and the only way she would move up is if I would kill ghouls (again, something I never had to do before). And i couldn't even skip the heart condition talk.
***In the BOS compound the Lab and A-Ring are connected, you don't have to travel all the way out to the courtyard and back. I'm sure most may allready know this, but I didn't and just want to inform everyone else who doesn't, because it saves decent time***
The most ridiculous part of this playthrough (it stopped being an attempt and just became practice) was after Getting the G.E.C.K. (everything from the BOS to vault 87 went fine). I was using the same "run through everybody without shooting or stopping" and was working my way through the supermutants on my way out of the G.E.C.K. room and making my way to the room where you get knocked out. I make it to the room, get knocked out, and have Autum talk to me, but while he's talking supermutants get into the room. I black out, and when I awake, IM STILL IN THE SAME ROOM. AND ITS FULL OF SUPERMUTANTS. AND IM STILL UNABLE TO MOVE OR DO ANYTHING. AND IT DOESNT STOP. I can only guess that its because supermutants are in the room preventing fast travel. When I reload my save before the G.E.C.K room and try to avoid this it just happens again, even if I close doors, run as far ahead as possible before the sceen goes white, or get into "hidden" mode it still happens. On my old run(yesterday's) I tried the save before th G.E.C.K. and everything worked fine, but I noticed there were only 6-7 supermutants in the area, as opposed to today where there must have honestly been at least 20. Don't know why.
I'm bringing up all of these mishaps because 1. I need to vent 2. We don't want any of this happening during a run, it would slow it down and possibly end it. I need to see if this was just isolated unlucky incidents or something we could control and prevent.
Ewil is right about hugging the walls in the G.E.C.K. area, it is much less radiation, I must have just been doing it wrong before. He's also right about the spot in the right hand corner, but I found a slightly better spot right behind the doorway, where you also get no rads. I think its better because 1. When traveling over to the right hand corner spot you still get a few extra unwanted rads on the trip over. 2. You'll be slightly closer to the exit, you only need to move forward a little to grab the G.E.C.K. rather than forward and to the side. Still all of this is very minor, less than a second woth of time difference probably. Also, should go without saying, but if you were lucky enough to get any rad-X from med cabinets you should take it now, it make the whole area a breeze with 100 medicine skill.
In case anyone was wondering my new build for this run (and most likely future ones) was:
S-1                                           
P-2
E-10
C-4
I-9
A-10
L-9 (still get +5 to everything with only 9 luck)
Tagged: Medicine, Repair, Small Guns//// Build up Sm. Guns first then dump as much as possible in Med. before V.87
Now one last important thing, how will this run be timed? For all my timing I was just using the ingame timer that shows up next to your save files. I believe it is accurate. I know it doesn't show up at the end but we can save right before we enter the last chamber then add real time. It is important to note if we do use it The ingame timer counts just about everything. Time spent examining a body(corpse looting, pickpocketing, or giving stuff to a partner) looking in an ammo or medical box, looking in a locker or desk all counts toward your time. The same goes for time spent immobile in cutscenes time spent looking at your pipboy, and even time looking at the main menu(esc) The only thing I didnt't test was seeing if time on spent on loading screens is added or not, but thats pretty extreme. Because pipboy time is added its a good idea to hotkey everything you'll use, including stimpacks.
Also, how would a single-segment of this be handled. The autosave upon entering a room can't be turned off (maybe with some developer console stuff). Would this have to be done like the Portal run to ensure there aren't shenanigans?
Saccharin, that trick is amazing. Kinda reminds me of OoT in a way.
Has anyone else attempted any kind of run yet? I know it's early, and there will always be improvements found as time progresses, but I just wanna see what everyone else can accomplish. The 75 minute time done by the devs actually seems kinda impressive right now, I'm mainly trying to break that barrier for now, then slowly shave it down more (while maybe upping the difficulty).
Ok, I reall need to stop writing. Sorry, its hard for me to boil things down.

[I Empire]

I haven't done a run yet. Still trying to test some glitches, iron out a perfect route, and develope a good build. I haven't given up on the baby glitch yet. I'm trying to find a trigger or something in the game to change you from a baby to a 19 year old after leaving the vault. If we can get that happen, then we can actually use the glitch and it should save a good 6 or 7 minutes on the "Escape" mission.

I'm expecting to start my first run this coming weekend.

[Ewil]

I'd do a run if I'd have enough time and my game wouldn't randomly freeze in Tranquility Lane.

[cortez]

I'd do a run if I'd have enough time and my game wouldn't randomly freeze in Tranquility Lane.

yeah making footages from this game suck balls. my game always freezes after i recorded some seconds.

[zato]

I've found the only way to make the game don't crash is playing it on a window. But then the brightness doesn't apply and I can't see at night...

[FUKKEN]

- When you activate the bridge to Rivet City you can jump on and run forward before it stops swinging. Saves about half a second!

When you grab the location, just fast travel to Rivet City and the bridge will be extended.

- Pick up the bobblehead while you wait for your dad.
- Once your dad starts talking to Dr. Li, you don't have to wait for the conversation to finish just interupt and talk to dad to get the next quest started.

Entering then re-entering Science Lab skips his walking animation, so you don't have to wait for him.

Also, I prefer to use the river to get to Rivet City, I believe that's the fastest way (and safest). You usually don't get much radiation out of it, because it's only +1 a second.

[Ewil]

I've found the only way to make the game don't crash is playing it on a window. But then the brightness doesn't apply and I can't see at night...

Tried and didn't work Not even the unofficial patch works in Tranqility Lane. It works for other locations though.

[X]

I've been playing around with the jefferson memorial mutants. And its definatley all the way with grenade kills. What you need is to pick up as many of these as you can and maybe a combat shotgun?

[saccharin]

It's quite possible to beat 12 minutes from Start New Game to exiting the vault.

[Registryis4chumps]

Still cracking away at this, seeing what I can discover. Finished a run today on easy for a rough time. I got a time of 1:30:26 as my save time right before going in to put the code in. All the saving I did for area time estimates probably added 26 seconds, so we'll say an hour and a half. None of this should be considered great, I know I still don't have the skill, or the proper stategy for a run under 75 minutes.  Here's some quick time notes for those who want to compare times (and hopefully beat mine by alot)

Autosave upon leaving the vault-13:00- I was definetly wrong about 13:00 being too fast, this could be lower for certain, I took a wrong dialogue option during the G.O.A.T., and for some reason I couldnt skip Butch talking to me at age 19. Also, alot of small movement errors that add up to some seconds. I was thinking a little below 12:30, but saccharin could be right about sub-12, my party might have been slower than I thought.

Enter Smith Casey's Garage- 19:30 This means it took me 6:30 to run there, I wanna see how fast others can make it. I had to kill a dog and a molerat on the way, running while doing so of course. Equipping the gun costs time, a real run would probably never have to get it out.

Exit the garage, with dad- 23:19- I really don't know why this took so long, I didn't seem to make any mistakes, and even did little stuff like jumping over the railings and such.

Enter the Jefferson Memorial Gift shop-30:00- again I wanna see how fast others can walk(and swim) from 101 to inside, or at least close enough to get it on the fast travel map

Exit the Jefferson Memorial- 36:06- this was HORRIBLY slow, by improving the strategy and execution(or better yet skipping all the killing) a huge chunk of time will be sliced off. Oh, and I took a 3 second nap while inside.

Turn on the mainframe- 43:00- I have to wait a few hours for dad to get into the rotunda, and he decides to waste time by talking to me before he gets there. The rest of his chores went pretty quick.

Enter the 2nd half of taft tunnels- 49:26- Li was more cooperative, but she still stalled when she saw an enclave soldier

Exit tunnels- 53:45- the whole group was really slow, and liked to pause even if there were no enemies in the area

Exit the BOS compound- 1:00:23- Even with the long cutscene, I don't know why the BOS stuff took this long, I didn't seem to make any noticable errors. I did get the power armor training, but that takes less than 15 seconds, he isn't out of the way at all.

Enter vault 87, reaction chamber- 1:06:30- Little Lamplight seemed to go well, Joseph was even pretty close to the terminal, and I even  pushed him to speed him up a little (be carefull, sometimes he'll stop to yell at you when doing this).

Save right before I go into the G.E.C.K.- 1:09:52 ran through the supermutants pretty fast I thought, but you're pretty much guaranteed to get stuck for a second or two using this method.

Save in the Citadel Lab, right before starting the convo between the Lyons'- 123:25[- Raven Rock went OK, but had all sorts of little errors adding up. And I shouldnt have grabbed the en. weapons bobblehead, not really worth it I think.

Some general notes:
-Everything stated by FUKKEN is right, and should be used, the river route definetly seems better
-If you still want to try and get a weapon drop off of a raider, theres almost always some outside the Super Duper Mart, you can pick them off as you walk by
-I think running and swimming are the same speed. Swimming kinda felt faster, but my tests showed otherwise.
-On easy(and I guess very easy too) you should never look in any more Med boxes afer the one in front of you at age 19. They aren't necessary. Theres more than enough stims in there for the whole game.
- If you leave the abondoned tranq. lane house fast enough after innitiating the China Syndrome, you walk out to find no Chinese army on the street. They appear a few seconds later. This avoids some of the OBSCENE lag they create when they start firing.
-You don't have to talk to Autumn  at the end. Just kill him.

The biggest concern of the run right now for me is clearing the Jefferson memorial. The trouble of killing them has lead me to a possible new build strategy. Inside vault 112, theres a small armory, and the only way of opening it that I know of, is by hacking a hard computer, requiring us to have science at 75 (really only 70 because of the lab coat from 101). In the armory there's an assault rifle with 64 ammo, a laser rifle with 84 ammo, 3 frag grenades, 3 pulse grenades, combat armor with about 13 dur., and various medical stuff on a table. The rifle and grenades could prove quite useful for the Jeferson mutants, but we would have to change things up a little to get this stuff (and waste the actual time hacking, going in, and picking it up.)  We could just tag science instead of repair or energy weapons, then pour skill points into science until it hits 70. We'll lose some points to small guns, but it could be worth it in the end. Certainly worth trying, especially for harder difficulties.

The "about 75 minute" Bethesda time (http://bethblog.com/index.php/2008/09/15/fallout-3-speed-run-it-was-that-close/) seems a bit crazy the more I try to match or beat it. Even more impressive is that was done as a true single segment attempt, where as my time is from multiple re-attempted tries of some parts. I know theres plenty of room for improvement in my attempts, but 15 minutes is alot of time to improve using my strats. I'm sure there are shortcuts and tricks that we are missing. Biggest of which is the trick made at 70 minutes. This means that it must be very close to the end. I thought it could be:
1. Skipping all of Liberty Prime stuff and just going through the forcefield at the Jefferson Building without him. I tried getting through at all areas, including looking for alt. entrances through the water or pipes outside, and the closest I got was a small opening where the forcefield begins, which I could never get through
2. Starting up the Liberty prime computer and letting him out without going through all the conversation cutscene stuff before. I can make it to his computer, and even test out his voice, but he doesn't have the energy required to power on. Looking into this further I checked the other things on his computer, and old notes on it tell about Dr. Braun possibly having the knowledge to power him, I can't find any way to talk to Braun, even if I do get into his admin office at Vault 112. Seems like an interesting mystery for someone to investigate.
The Bethblog does say that the trick was messed up 3 times by one guy, meaning that it could be complex, not just some simple skip or route change. Really have no idea what it is though, and I bet they'll keep it under wraps.

Also, while the escape as a baby trick is amusing and impressive, I'm just having a hard time thinking it could be usefull in a speedrun. Even if we do find a way to grow up, what are the chances the main quest is still doable? Will dad even be in 112? I'm not saying people shouldn't try doing more with the trick, but I'm not going to get my hopes up.

[rooster|sexej]

Been toying around with the game, surely looking forward to a run. If I find anything interesting, I'll let you know.

GOGO

[DateHell]

The Bethblog does say that the trick was messed up 3 times by one guy, meaning that it could be complex, not just some simple skip or route change. Really have no idea what it is though, and I bet they'll keep it under wraps.

To me it sounded like they had to use one of the skills (speech, lockpick, terminal-hack) to use the trick... and load the game if one fails. Could ofc still be some hard-to-walk route that has some setback points