Norfolk, EnglandI just separated console and emulator into their own sub-categories, mainly because of loads making times not as easy to compare, and we have a few emulator runs, including one recently.
EDIT: The load remover is now available through LiveSplit itself; a guide on how to set it up can be found here. Please post in the thread if you have any issues with it.
ORIGINAL POST: I hope I don't need to explain why timing without load times is good, so I won't.
I have made a simple load removal script for this game for LiveSplit...
If you want to use/test this right now you can add it to your layout by downloading it and adding it using the Scriptable Auto Splitter component, although once I know it works for people other than me I will get it added into LiveSplit so you can just activate it from the splits editor.
This detects the load screens with the bar on them, which to me seem to be the only loading zones (and I'm playing from a HDD so any loading should be noticeable to me). I haven't tested it with all loading screens of course but it should be fine.
As you can see from the comment in the script file, you will need to add "-eac_launcher" to your command line argument launch options which is easily done in uPlay or Steam. This disables EasyAntiCheat and is needed because EAC blocks the memory from being read.
Also as I write this I see the leaderboard is already set up to take both times with and without loads, although I don't know which it's organised by (hint: it should be organised by time without loads).
I decided to make a load remover for the PC version of this game to make it easier to get your time without loads. I submitted a guide to the Guides section on this game to tell you how to set it up. (As of this post the LiveSplit website is down so you can't download the extra component in the guide right now, but the load remover works fine without it, it's just more convenient I feel.)
Right now it only works with the "RELOADED" No-CD EXE (seeing as the game is no longer available for purchase on Steam from what I know). If anyone wants to help me find the memory addresses for the Steam version, feel free. (Although it's probably easier for people to just use the same EXE that I made it for.)
I have only tested it myself but I assume it should work OK for other people, as long as you use the same EXE that I made it for.
If people want to see the code for the load remover, it's available here.
@uhTrance: for the other run that is currently on the leaderboards, you should probably find out the loadless time or just copy over the "time with loads" into the "time without loads" so that my terrible run doesn't have first place when it shouldn't.
So, uh, people in Dekap's chat were telling me the leaderboards "have gone to shit" and I need to change them. So I tell ryedawg to post on the forums, but he "doesn't want to look like an idiot", so I'll look like the idiot for him I guess.
So I'm not exactly sure what is wanted, but it seems like the DLC debate has come up again in it. Also "everyone should run on one patch(?)". Also, apparently Kyle wants stuff changed, but again, he hasn't said or posted anything, so how am I meant to know?
So I guess this thread is here for people to discuss what they actually mean/want. We need a central, archived place we can talk about this, it's what the forums are for (and luckily are usually used in this way already usually), talking about this stuff in chats/Mumble/TeamSpeak means some people will miss out on points of the debate.
I'll add my points later when I have actually thought about this a bit more.
I dunno if this is a new update thing or not, but I just noticed that if you start a new game after collecting all the star seeds, you can put on the Ninja skin in that new game through the menu, although putting it on and then starting a new game doesn't keep it on, unfortunately. The skin gives you the ability to jump twice as high, so maybe this might help a little bit? Someone should play around with it and see if it does, and if they want to run it I can add it as a separate category.
The update also added another locked skin, which I shall assume you get by completing the new Data Bank collection, but I don't know what that is yet.
EDIT: Seems like the new skin is called "Native B.U.D." although I don't know what it does yet.
(Long post; if you just wanna see the strat, watch the first video.)
(You should probably ignore the timer in the video; see the timings below.)
Seeing as our current strategy for the mission "Pay Ray" is very RNG heavy in more ways than one (making it very inconsistent) I decided to try and find something else we could do to make the $1500 as quick as possible.
A couple of days ago, tduva brought up the fact he ran through a donut stall to get into a "mini-game"/side-mission (which isn't on the map), where if you lose the cops you get some cash, and when he did it in 2006 he got a lot of money, but said that obviously wouldn't be very useful when we need it in 1978. Then I remembered that there are ones in 1978, and they unlock at the same time as the rest of the side-missions (I'm pretty sure the cutscene for Pay Ray even mentions there are side-missions that aren't on the map). I then remembered there is one of these very close to your Hunts Point garage, and this strat was born.
What you have to do is get a bike before "Pay Ray" (as you would usually try to do as we usually use one for that mission). If you get it the mission prior, store it in your garage, if you got it before that, go into your garage and get the stored one.
After this you need to warp to Hunts Point (which I seemed to have more luck doing with the map; doing it through the garage messed up once and kept me in the same place even though it thought I was at Hunts Point I think).
Once you're outside the Hunts Point garage, drive towards where the stall is (see the video) and run into it, which will put your heat at the maximum and spawn some cop cars nearby, and then try to escape the cops as fast as possible (I find driving on the sidewalk helps lose them). If you do this really well, you will lose the cops quickly (after this keep driving to make sure they don't catch up again) you will get $2000 straight away (and sometimes an extra $10000 for perfect driving, but that was rare for me in testing). If you do it a little too slowly, it will give you less, but I never got less than $1000 when doing tests. If you wanted to continue the run you can just turn around and do the same thing again to get more, which is slower, but is still probably quicker (and more consistent) than the strat we were already using.
Once it gives you the money, you can then warp away as usual and complete the mission and then continue on. This sometimes seems to require you to warp to a garage to get the mission to spawn for some reason (this happens with the old strat too), so do that if needed.
Now the first thing that concerned me was cops and traffic RNG, but the cops always spawn in the same spots at the strat and my testing showed this to be very consistent.
For the timing, I timed from spawning at the garage until the game awarded me the money. You will have to add ~30 seconds onto this to compensate for the rest of what you need to do.
The first testing I did was from a new game. I did this 3 times and had a bike every time, and 2/3 of these times I got the $2000 quickly (under 1:00); the other time I only got $1000 but could've maybe gone back. The second testing I did was from doing the same thing over and over from a saved game (although I didn't purposefully reload it, I just kept warping back and trying again mostly). I did this 7 times and 5/7 of these times I got the $2000 quickly (under 1:00), one time I had to go back to get the extra $1000 (2:10) and the other time I got $1000 far away and felt like going back was not worth it.
So as you can probably guess, this strat seems very consistent, as long as you do the strat correctly, and can save a ton of time (my best split is ~2:00, which would save 0:30; my PB/WR is ~3:50, which would save over 2:00).
Now you're probably wondering about this "TAS" strat. In the first run I did from the start, I found out that knocking the stall over (which starts the mission) and the cops chasing you has a very small gap. This means if you could perfectly time losing a cop (which I got on the way there by accident) just after starting the mission but not spawning the others in, you will complete the mission straight away, getting you the $2000 and the perfect driver $10000 bonus too. Even though it was amazing at the time, it would probably only save ~17 seconds or so, so don't think it's worth looking into, but it sure was cool. See the video below for this amazing strat(!)
While downloading the new Donut Mod today, I grabbed the new mod launcher (1.10) along with it. If people didn't know, I already used this because it includes a "hack" (as they call it) to fix the windowed mode stuff and makes it run properly on new computers with multiple cores (most people usually use "compatibility mode" to do this).
But as I found out, the new mod launcher includes a load of new stuff, including a "Frame Limiter" hack. If you guys don't know, the games physics can get a little whacky if you have too high of a frame rate, and a lot of us have been limiting it with Dxtory and such recently to help with that.
But, that's not the best part. The best part is because the frame limiter is a proper "hack" for the game, they've also included an option for it not to limit the loading screens, which is the major issue we had and one reason Cookie didn't want to limit the frame rate before.
The limiter also allows you to change the frame rate cap; by default it's 60 (which is what most of us use).
I haven't fully tested this thing out yet, but it seemed to work fine for me from what I can tell, but maybe someone better than me could do a full run using it and see how they get on? The only issues I had were that (according to Dxtory anyway) the frame rate wasn't exactly 60 (but that might be Dxtory lying, I don't know) but that shouldn't change much, and the game looked like it stuttered every half-second or so, but that might be an issue with my PC? I'm not sure.
The new launcher also has a "hack" that allows you to run the game at any resolution your graphics card supports, which is also nice. It also has a widescreen mod, although I probably won't be allowing this for speedruns right now. Of course, all other mods and hacks that let you cheat are not allowed!
You can find the download for this on this page: http://donutmod.donutteam.com/download.php
If you came here to find a NG+ save, use this one: https://www.speedrun.com/saves/Save8_jdrbV.7z
ORIGINAL POST:
LINK TO SAVE: http://www.speedrun.com/saves/Simpsons_HAR_NGPlus_Save_FTnMt.zip
Seeing as a few people were discussing about running NG+ recently (mainly for the "All Story Missions" category) I decided to write a thread about it and upload a save we can all use that is optimised for NG+, so we all have a level playing field. Most of the ideas for this came from some of us runners talking in Cookie's chat the other day; if you have any other inputs or suggestions, feel free to reply to this thread!
The save we decided to use can have anything unlocked, so I just chose to use a 100% save. This means all cars/costumes and all FMVs have been watched, which means they are skippable without needing to pause-buffer or anything. Of course naturally, we cannot do the tutorial mission, so that isn't part of a NG+ run.
The idea of this save is to have everything all set up to make the run as fast as possible; here is a small list of things I did:
100% (all cars/clothes/FMVs). Saved on L1M1. Correct clothes already selected on levels that need them. (For Marge: Inmate) All cars from phone booths have 0% damage. Level 1 Homer is wearing the Muumuu (by request of runners).
In regards to where to start the timer: I think we should start it when you hit "resume game" from the menu after you have loaded said save. It's either that, or start it when you load the save originally.
I'm not sure if I forgot about anything; knowing me I probably did. If there's anything else you can think about that could be default in the save that would make a run quicker, please do tell me.
Just thought I'd post this video tutorial I made because I figured this stuff out myself and thought it might be useful if people need to do this themselves. You just need Livestreamer and VLC installed and the "video source" plugin for OBS. There are links in the actual YouTube description if you need help finding it.
The #gta community is planning on having a marathon on the week of 15th to 21st September. As part of that there are planned blocks for "GTA clones" which should hopefully include this game.
The current schedule is available at this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AscWW6qzLaWIdGxSa1VNQkx5b1hZcGFBcXVrZEVoVWc#gid=3
I have submitted an All Story Missions run of this game which I will do, but wanted to ask if anyone was interested in doing a race instead? Right now the time isn't set in stone but is quite flexible so we should be able to find a good time for us all. I asked eidgod (one of the organisers) and he thought this would be a good idea.
If you don't want to do/be in a race I could probably get you in to commentate anyway, which would be good because I am terrible at that right now.
Seeing as we didn't have a basic strat sharing thread yet, I thought I'd make this.
I'll kick it off by showing off this highlight of my strat I use for the 2nd limo in Apu's mission "...and Baby Makes 8". I dunno if anyone else uses it but I find it pretty reliable for me.
