Path of Radiance Speedrun prep for AGDQ 2015

[Gwimpage]

Hello everyone I submitted both Radiant Dawn and Path of Radiance about a month and a half ago for AGDQ 2015 and both made it past second cuts! The only thing left is for the marathon schedule to be made which should be coming out in a few weeks. Both myself and Vykan12 submitted RD and if we both make it to AGDQ he'll be running RD vs me running PoR in a bid war. I'll be keeping up in practice for both in case he can't make it. AGDQ stands for Awesome Games Done Quick held each January and it's a speedrunning charity marathon raising money for breast cancer research. This AGDQ's dates are January 4-10th?

If I do run the game at the marathon I'll be running on Fixed mode to prevent bad level ups along with using the Growth Bands to further assist in Ike and Marcia's Defense stats. The late game section of the run is actually scary which worries me for consistency. My run estimate is a generous 2:30:00 when my Personal Best is an embarrassing 2:17:xx which can definitely go a lot lower.

That being said the PoR route I am using at the moment can use some massive improvements since I used a mix of Chiki's old route and my own in the second half of the game. I'm not the best at routing and since PoR is different than other runs in which you must avoid combat as much as possible. I feel like I'm better at optimizing games better than routing them *shrugs*

SDA Thread is here: https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/agdq_2015_game_submissions_round_2.html

Second cuts list is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ejuauu9R5W3_dJN97S2SrIAadHWq7EpZcdf2oWDTBRo/pubhtml#

I'll have to figure out how to embed youtube videos/playlists but here is my Speedrun strat playlist. The opening section of the run is largely the same from Chiki's own route from earlier this year, I don't know if there's an updated run anywhere I so simply built on an older route.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLybTK2FNBqXJ6NVuWQf3jUyrmNbE4bkp_

I have school this week so I won't have too much time to update the playlist, I'll make some new videos this week but mostly just wanted to get this out there. After making these videos I improved on the Chapter 21 strat to not require the BEXP. Not even sure why I BEXP'ed Ike so much, Tauroneo and the enemies in the throne room can kill Ike but he did not need that much BEXP. Ike still wants as much durability as possible for Chapter 27 down the line as well.

Having a good run at AGDQ would mean the world to me and would love to do the series some justice after last years marathon. I'm surprised FE got another shot only a year but I intend to do my absolute best to keep up in practice. I can also run the game on the Japanese version for the Critical glitch, this could save a ton of time and make for a better watch but I'm unsure and would like some opinions on it. The downside to the JPN version is my nerves could overwhelm me to forgetting Kanji patterns for simple commands if I'm unsure what I'm doing (practice and practice for this!). People can also be less attached to the run since it's a first appearance and being unable to read some text in an RPG.

Thanks~

Edited October 1, 2014 by Gwimpage

[Tables]

I would stick to English. The crit glitch is nice, but it's not a gamebreaking glitch like in some other RPGs, it just gives you slightly faster ways to beat fights, so it's probably only a few minutes difference. Plus cutscene% should totally be a thing. They're so bad.

I for one will be donating for FERD (nothing personal Gwim; man you know how good FE10 is for speedrunning), but would be happy to see FE9 in there as well. I just feel like it's a little too slow in comparison.

[Gwimpage]

I would stick to English. The crit glitch is nice, but it's not a gamebreaking glitch like in some other RPGs, it just gives you slightly faster ways to beat fights, so it's probably only a few minutes difference. Plus cutscene% should totally be a thing. They're so bad.I for one will be donating for FERD (nothing personal Gwim; man you know how good FE10 is for speedrunning), but would be happy to see FE9 in there as well. I just feel like it's a little too slow in comparison.

No offense taken. I run both games and prefer RD as a speedgame but PoR does have a special place in my heart. Path of Radiance actually lets you menu faster than RD but it's massively slowed down by the map animations. Check out the EndGame strats menu'ing. The bid war could be close or a complete blowout since RD is so polarizing with casual fans so I'm totally unsure what would even win.

[dondon151]

any chance you and vykan could race RD?

[Florete]

Great news! I was on Vykan's stream the other day and saw RD had been accepted, but I didn't know the details.

Having a good run at AGDQ would mean the world to me and would love to do the series some justice after last years marathon. I'm surprised FE got another shot only a year but I intend to do my absolute best to keep up in practice. I can also run the game on the Japanese version for the Critical glitch, this could save a ton of time and make for a better watch but I'm unsure and would like some opinions on it. The downside to the JPN version is my nerves could overwhelm me to forgetting Kanji patterns for simple commands if I'm unsure what I'm doing (practice and practice for this!). People can also be less attached to the run since it's a first appearance and being unable to read some text in an RPG.

Thanks~

I would say Japanese given it's faster, if PoR gets run. I've seen plenty of runs done on Japanese at GDQ events (Cosmo's WWHD run was even done in Spanish because it's just slightly faster), so I don't think it will be an issue. I would imagine you should be able to get the menuing down with enough practice. Unless you have a particularly bad memory, this should be easy enough.

any chance you and vykan could race RD?

I gotta second this one, too. Honesty, I was a bit saddened to see that it would be a bid war for the two games, because a bid war is almost guaranteed to go to PoR; more people know about it and it's generally preferred. But RD is worlds better as a speedrun game if only because of PoR's map animations (though there are other factors, of course). Really, the only advantage I can think of for PoR as a speedrun is the lag you get on RD menus, which is pretty much the least exciting part of the runs as it is. Then again, I'm not exactly a speedrunner, so...

But can this even be changed at this point?

[Randa]

wait so if its a bid war why does the main site say it will be a race?

https://gamesdonequick.com/submission/all#accept

Vykan12 Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn any% race w/ Gwimpage 03:10:00 FE10 has been optimized such that the cursor movement in the 91-segment SDA run can be replicated in SS, and with a time > 20 mins faster, albeit on a lower difficulty. Player phases demonstrate lightning fast cursor movement & menuing while enemy phase provides the perfect reprieve for detailed commentary. Races are highly competitive, with me & Gwimpage often finishing within 1 min of each other Nintendo Wii Accep

[Gwimpage]

wait so if its a bid war why does the main site say it will be a race?

https://gamesdonequick.com/submission/all#accept

Vykan12 Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn any% race w/ Gwimpage 03:10:00 FE10 has been optimized such that the cursor movement in the 91-segment SDA run can be replicated in SS, and with a time > 20 mins faster, albeit on a lower difficulty. Player phases demonstrate lightning fast cursor movement & menuing while enemy phase provides the perfect reprieve for detailed commentary. Races are highly competitive, with me & Gwimpage often finishing within 1 min of each other Nintendo Wii Accep

This is actually Vykan's pitch he made when he submitted Radiant Dawn for the Marathon, I also put something like "Possible race with Vykan" in my pitch. If you look on the Google doc spreadsheet in the OP and find RD you'll notice Mike (Marathon organizer) put down "bid war, also this is a bad idea for a race".

I gotta second this one, too. Honesty, I was a bit saddened to see that it would be a bid war for the two games, because a bid war is almost guaranteed to go to PoR; more people know about it and it's generally preferred. But RD is worlds better as a speedrun game if only because of PoR's map animations (though there are other factors, of course). Really, the only advantage I can think of for PoR as a speedrun is the lag you get on RD menus, which is pretty much the least exciting part of the runs as it is. Then again, I'm not exactly a speedrunner, so...

But can this even be changed at this point?

any chance you and vykan could race RD?

I don't think a race is an option at this point as much as I would love for one. Radiant Dawn being a first appearance has to have focused commentary which you might not be able to give in a race setting. Since AGDQ is aimed towards a casual audience I assume they don't want to overwhelm the viewer with two screens for a game they likely haven't seen before. Not to mention there's a ton of random factors throughout the game which can put either of us in the lead for no reason. Edward, Nephenee and the 4-4 sleep staff bishop are just a few. Also hilariously enough me and Vykan tried to race about a week ago, we resetted the race about 5 times before continuing because of Edward. (It was his luck with Edward, not mine lol) I'm off to class today and have tomorrow off so I'll upload some PoR stuff tonight or tomorrow afternoon.

[Gwimpage]

It's a bit late into the evening but I uploaded a new Chapter 21 strat. This map is really annoying because of the armor's around and Tauroneo himself deal a lot of damage to Ike if they connect. Tauroneo has around a 64% hit rate (Neutral Bio) on you while the armors both have 40% (Again at neutral Bio). The swordmaster has a killing edge with a 55% hit rate and 39% crit rate. So Ike's survival relies on some luck and this can be fixed by giving him some BEXP however it takes him going from Level 6 to 9 for 1 Defense level. This should change with help of the Knight band since his Defense and Strength levels should be higher. I'll have to make a new file and start from scratch to test it out but I wanted to get this out there before heading off to bed. Ike has 41/17/11 Defenses and the Sleep staff bishop only has a 20-30 hit rate on him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhvLyF9jmdc&feature=youtu.be

edit: found out how to embed youtube videos. That was way too simple for me to figure out on my own haha.

Edited October 1, 2014 by Gwimpage