Half-Life segmented in 20 minutes 41 seconds

λ Half-Life
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Scripts was used to ease the making of the run. Everything is still possible w/o scripts. It’s just a matter how reasonable it would be to pull it off. The exception would be triggerdelay scripts, which never could be done that accurately w/o scripts. All the six triggerdelays adds up to about 42 seconds. The testchamber skip doesn’t need any delay, and the pushboost should be fairly easy.
After that I have no clue and can only guess. Let’s say 40 seconds plus.

I heard pruno was going to make a scriptless run after seeing the new tricks. Will be interesting to see what he comes up with : >

(You can make triggerdelays w/o scripts as well. But it’s questionable if binding a button to “wait” would be appropriate for a scriptless run. In CS CZ DS, Secret War, I saved over a minute by lowering the fps and spamming wait with the mwheel. fps_max 5 and 25 scrolls before hitting the trigger gave me 5 seconds to reposition the loading. This demo was not submitted for said issue.)

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Most of the time saved comes from new shortcuts/time savers, and using one of the infinite health doors for considerably more boosts and the ensuing small shortcuts these allow (roughly 4-6 minutes). The fast fire glitch, jump bug, and edge bug save considerable time (rougly 40-60s), and faster bhoping, chopping up stairs, more precise and better running also save considerable time (well over a minute). There’s also much better and more use of object boosting throughout (probably over 20s saved)

We tried to keep script use to a minimum, opting for well placed segment breaks in the middle of hard parts or more segments in general and/or working harder on the segment whenever possible; only indulging in more scripting as a last resort when a particularly hard segment called for it, usually this would be at the start of a new important or hard segment (there are many) and only use one movement and turning direction through out (+left;+moveleft) and last for less than a half second.

That being said, there are many parts that never could have turned out quite so well, usually keeping near optimal speed through obstructing passages, like the pipe exit before blast pit lift up in the spoiler vid. Altogether this saved more production and head ache time than it would run time, and it’s taken almost 3 years as is.

And as Quad said earlier, it’s fair to consider it a quasi-TAS, probably more so than any other HL run made thus far aside from the pure TAS ones. There is very considerable help from scripts, and also the best script-less human running ever done on goldsource.

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Short story about c1a0

When crash and I decided to remake the suit room, we agreed to remake it all the way from the beginning. Crash could not beat my first take from early 2012 (top left) so I invited other pro bhoppers. Blasdfa got some really good time but crashed into the wall towards the end (bottom left) ruining the start for next segment. Then pruno joined in and got the times down even further. But slightly poor exit speed rendered the improvement nullified (bottom right). But since it had a better look I decided to use it. Crashfort refused to be beaten and made further attempts (top right) smashing all the previous demos with superior time and exit speed matching my initial demo.

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I like the fact that you use the word “smashing” as if he was like a second faster, when in fact if you blink in the end when watching the real-time version you really couldn’t see who won. I guess it just goes to show how höyled this run really is, and how such minor details are a huge deal to you.

I hope you can release more tidbits like these after the run is released, as I’m sure you have a lot of them. 8)

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So when’s this coming out? Been looking forward to it for some time :slight_smile:

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The Question on EVERYONE’S mind.

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page 21

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21 minute HL speedrun, 7 runners, 21 divided by 7 is 3… HL3 confirmed.

Sorry I had to.

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Have you thought of doing a ‘map through time’ to show the differences between think-circle, dopefish, RE, SW and yourself?

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Not a bad idea. Will definitely be considered.

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21 pages, 21 minutes conspiracy.
nothing new in more than 10 days.

any updates how the editing is going? Also, which people are editing?
I regularly check this thread hoping there’s something new.

oh and, is the final video time going to be 21.13 without loading screens, I heard there’s issues relying on the demo time.

worth the weight :slight_smile:

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It’s under 21 minutes. Quad and I have been working out how we will be doing the commentary, I’ve been re-learning vegas and will probably be doing most of the editing for that, but we have a plan that shouldn’t require too much post-production and will still be great.

Also been talking with Yalter about getting getting the mod polished up a bit, so new players don’t have a lot of questions about it, and most of the configing is already done for you or can be done intuitively in the GUI menus, fixing some minor huds things.

Been talking with abu about making final trailer with official release date, but he’s been somewhat inconsistent communicating without skype.

And still need some type of intro, I was thinking of doing some live action or quasi-live action intermixed thing about 20-30s long, something like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw684xM2cUo

with intermixed, fleeting shots of route planning notes, maps, calculations and such, idk, what do you think?

Quad and I hoping for middle of March.

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That seems like a cool idea, personally, I would like to see that.

Also, if you release it on the 7th of March, that would give me an amazing birthday present. :slight_smile:

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I would love to see an in depth commentary for this run. I’m sure this run has the most depth out of almost any segmented run to date, and I’d love to get a look into the inner workings of it after I’ve watched the game get obliterated.

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I guess it could look good, but personally I think it’s too much work for a somewhat pointlessly pretentious result, and, being a volunteer work, it could potentially postpone the release by a couple more months. A well-edited montage of actual run excerpts capped in 3rd person or mixed 1st/3rd person or something similar could work at least as well, and would be a lot easier to make. Clever editing goes a very long way to hook and thrill a viewer for the main course.

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I’m with this. A lot of introductions can be pretty hit and miss for me - though to be fair, that’s because with a lot of Counter Strike frag vids its 2:30 of intro and 0:30 of frags.

The Half Life in Half an Hour had a perfect introduction: it was true to the actual game, it helped set the atmosphere, and it’s slow speed was the perfect contrast to the mind blowing speed of the actual run and it was just really simple.

I don’t think an introduction needs to be too special. Don’t overthink or overcomplicate things.

Though I will admit, if done well and just for 20-30 seconds the live action idea could be very cool.

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I liked the HLDDDQ introduction.

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The Half Hour Half-Life intro was pretty good from a cinematic, directing, artistic standpoint, I was trying for a Clockwork Orange type start, but Random Engy was a little bit late to start recording on that shot, so the tram was already in full motion and half-way down the hall. Random Engy had some good shots he thought up like the under the tram rail shot showing the forklift driving around was really great.

I did receive a lot of criticism from viewers though for being too long, most of the people I got opinions about it where fellow hardcore gamers and speedrunners of various games so they could appreciate the work and talent that went into the run itself and thought it should warrant such a long intro, and were already drawn into the run itself.

In hind sight I wish I cut out one scene and shortened a few a others, but at the time I felt like a director typically does when doing the final cutting to shorten the length of their film.

The main issue here is that for the most part, this film is going to be watched, critiqued, and reviewed by typical youtube viewers who would have this video show up as a recommendation or some how stumble on it through other social media. These people, and most people in general these days, are quick to judge, impatience, and have small attention spans. (which is unfortunate for artistic integrity)

With that in mind and wanting to fair favorably in this regard, it makes the most sense to have to the intro be fairly short, but at same time tell a provocative narrative and draw the viewer in. And sense it’s the first impression people will see, and for many, sadly, the last thing they will see, it’s very important that it does this quite well.

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That’s a fair point. I’ve been eager to see this run for a long time now, but I’m sure I can wait a bit longer for the introduction to be made superbly.

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I spent a fair amount of time thinking about possible ways to do intros for this run, but after talking to quadrazid I agree with him in that there’s really no need for one. When I think back to my favorite speedruns, frag movies, TV shows and whatnot, most of them have a very short intro at most. Instead of trying to paint an ambient setting for the run or show, they just give it to you instead and let the actual piece speak for itself.

To be fair, the run still starts out *relatively *slow anyway, with a decent amount of just hanging around waiting for NPCs. Perhaps during the first couple of minutes you could flash the names of the people involved in the run in the bottom right corner or so, just like a TV series would. This way you still have a natural intro, but it’s at the same time part of the run and you’re not wasting any time. Then, after the test chamber is done, the “intro” is over and the run starts for real.

After all, this is the fastest run ever made in this game, so why drag it out and make it feel slower? Fuck that, just hit me straight in the face from the very first second, and never drop the pressure until the end.

When it comes to commentary, I stand by what I first thought. First of all, I see no point in doing a regular voice-over commentary. You won’t even have time to start talking about a certain trick or route until it’s gone anyway.

Second of all, the explanation video Quadrazid did for opposing force is one of the most interesting HL videos I’ve seen, so much so that I’ve watched the explanation video more times that I’ve watched the actual run. It just feels like the most natural way to do a goldsource commentary, since you can break it down so far and go so deep. Be proud of the fact that you guys know so extraordinarily much about this game, down to coding level, and share that knowledge with the rest of us. Speedrunning to me is 50% doing cool shit quickly, and 50% just knowing every detail about the game. Oftentimes the most impressive tricks are not the huge one-time skips, but rather the tiny details that add up overall. Those details won’t be made justice in a normal voice-over.

Please, I just hope that you’ll keep it simple and elegant. One video for the run, as scaled as possible, and one for the explanation, as informative as possible.