OK, so I don't imagine this post contains anything new for folks already 
acquainted with such stuff...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k3pxys0fYQ

That's HalfLife 2, completed in about one and a half hours. And believe 
me, *most* of this is time standing around listening to NPCs.

First, we have the bunny hop. I don't pretend to know how this works, 
but by running and jumping in a certain combination, you trigger a 
glitch in the game which gives you the ability to travel about 7x faster 
than should be possible. Obviously this allows you to get from A to B 
much faster. But in this video, we see the player using this to run 
straight past wave after wave of enemies without even firing a single 
shot. Quite simply, he's *gone* before the enemies have a change to 
attack him.

Second, there is apparently some sort of physics glitch whereby if you 
stand on top of a movable object that you happen to be holding on to and 
jump, you go up in the air, but the object follows you, and you can then 
jump off of it again [even though it's suspended in thin air]. In 
summary, you can levitate. This means that impassable obstacles that 
should take you 20 minutes to navigate around, collecting keys, pressing 
switches, and so forth, can now simply be levitated over in a few seconds.

By combining bunny hops and levitation, some of the outdoor levels get 
completed in 12 seconds or less. (These levels would normally take 20 
minutes or so.) Sometimes you can just run outside, levitate into the 
sky, and straight-line it to wherever the exit is. The level will of 
course be designed to take you from A to B by the most circuitous route 
possible - but you just skipped it all! Need to get from street level to 
the top of a building? Don't battle through all the rooms, just levitate 
and go in through the window. [Assuming a suitable window is available.] 
And so on.

Perhaps most interestingly, whoever did this has discovered that if an 
NPC is walking somewhere, and you gently tap them on the head with a 
physics object, they instantly teleport forwards 12 feet. This lets you 
hurry up the dialogue sequences, which are now by far the slowest part 
of the whole game.

There are no rocket jumps, but I did see a few grenade jumps (and even a 
plasma ball jump). Perhaps the most impressive part is that nobody died. 
They came bloody close many, many times...

Leaving aside all that, *for me* the single most impressive thing I saw 
was the moment when the player kills one of the combine soldiers WITH A 
RADIATOR. He literally picked up a radiator, threw it at a guy, and that 
killed him. In all my years of playing HL2, I've never managed to get 
that to work. You often see people do it in HL2: Death Match. But it 
never, ever works for me...

(Rather, you point the gravity gun at a radiator, so it picks up some 
tiny splinter of wood laying on the ground several feet to the side of 
the radiator. And throwing a tiny speck of wood at somebody obviously 
does no damage at all.)

Post a reply to this message

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9k3pxys0fYQ
>
> That's HalfLife 2, completed in about one and a half hours. And believe
> me, *most* of this is time standing around listening to NPCs.

And of course, the original HalfLife:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN21YdyloP0

Fast way to skip a slow elevator: Just plunge to the bottom of the pit. 
It turns out that if you hit the bottom, you die from fall damage. But 
if you touch a ladder before you hit the ground, you sustain no damage 
at all.

As Miracle of Sound put it, "I'm the shooter guy; laws of physics and 
logic need not apply".

This guy has also apparently worked out that you can activate 
wall-mounted switches from THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WALL! o_O I especially 
like where he launches the rocket without bothering to fight his way 
into the bunker at all; he just runs up to the outside wall and flicks 
the switch - through the blast shield, concrete wall and bullet-proof 
glass. He then RIDES THE FRIGGING ROCKET as it takes off, just for giggles.

(It seems since the designers intended you to be locked inside when the 
rocket launches, they didn't actually program it to harm you, so...)

This particular speed run also features a lot of climbing out of the 
level to skip vast sections of it. God only knows how you know which way 
to walk when half the level isn't even being rendered!

Oh yeah, and *lots* of jumps with the gold gun. Charge that puppy up to 
full power and blast it at the sky box and you can skip half the jumping 
puzzles in Xen.

I have literally no idea how he just RUNS past that sound trap and 
somehow doesn't get turned into minced meat!

But for me, the most astonishing thing is the jumping. This guy pulls 
off jumps that usually take me an hour or more. The suspended boxes near 
the beginning. The residue processing centre. Half of Xen. It's amazing 
to see a level that took me 3 days get completed in 3 minutes...

Post a reply to this message

On 9/9/2012 5:53, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> And of course, the original HalfLife:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN21YdyloP0

Really? 51 minutes?

I was amazed when I saw it done in 45 minutes.  I was dumbfounded when I saw 
it done a year or two later in 22 minutes.

speeddemosarchive.com


-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "They're the 1-800-#-GORILA of the telecom business."

Post a reply to this message

On 09/09/2012 05:59 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 9/9/2012 5:53, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> And of course, the original HalfLife:
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN21YdyloP0
>
> Really? 51 minutes?
>
> I was amazed when I saw it done in 45 minutes. I was dumbfounded when I
> saw it done a year or two later in 22 minutes.
>
> speeddemosarchive.com

Interesting. I can't find HalfLife, only Opposing Force and Blue Shift.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> I was dumbfounded when I saw 
> it done a year or two later in 22 minutes.

"Half-hour Half-Life" was done in about 30 minutes. Have they got it down
to 22 minutes?

> speeddemosarchive.com

Seems to be broken currently, as half of the speedruns don't show up.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

On 9/10/2012 5:05, Warp wrote:
> "Half-hour Half-Life" was done in about 30 minutes. Have they got it down
> to 22 minutes?

I think so. I have saved a 45-minute run and (IIRC) a 22-minute speed run. 
Insane.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "They're the 1-800-#-GORILA of the telecom business."

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 10 Sep 2012 09:35:51 +0100, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> speeddemosarchive.com
>
> Interesting. I can't find HalfLife, only Opposing Force and Blue Shift.

They removed Spider-Waffle's Half-Life speedrun at some point because
he used scripts. They changed the site policy so as to ban runs that
use scripts.

-- 
Joel Yliluoma - http://iki.fi/bisqwit/

Post a reply to this message