Discussion Speedruns?

[fjx]

I wonder whether anybody had an idea of speedrunning the stock game or any of the Build mod storylines. Certainly would be an inteteresting thing to do. Out of curiosity I have tried to run stock POTC yesterday but gave up after my ship sunk in battle with "Oiseau", gotta admit I reached that point in about 10 minutes, so that is really cool. So many games have speedruns these days, but I couldnt find any for our beloved game. What are your thoughts about the idea?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Had to look it up:

What is SPEEDRUN?
A speedrun is a play-through (or a recording thereof) of a video game performed with the intention of completing a goal as fast as possible; most often to complete the game. Speedruns may cover a whole game or a selected part (such as a single level) and may impose additional requirements beyond quick completion.

Probably during storyline development and general testing, there is a LOT of "speedrunning" involved.
Most likely with cheats and console use to speed things up even more.
But that isn't something worth watching, I'd imagine.

 

[Grey Roger]

As you've found out, doing a speedrun on the "Standard" storyline is going to be tricky because you need to do some freelance stuff to get your skills and ship improved. You might be able to take the Oiseau with the original starting ship if you've done plenty of fighting and have improved your melee skills and perks, and preferably got a decent sword from one of the dungeons. You certainly won't complete the whole story with the original starting ship! Whether by raising lots of money and buying something better or by taking it from someone else, you'll definitely need something bigger than a lugger...

Other storylines might be more suitable for speedruns, and a video of such a speedrun could serve as a more visual walkthrough than the pages on our wiki - provided it's done without cheat mode or console. "Assassin" might be suitable as you can certainly complete that using the starting ship, mainly because the starting ship is awesome. "Woodes Rogers", being more an adventure story than a combat story, would probably be suitable.

 

[Joer]

From my knowledge of Speedruns, they work better in linear games and not really in openworld games like PotC. It'd be interesting to give it a try but I think it will be harder than we think.

 

[Tingyun]

@Joer Speedruns for Morrowind are super interesting. If I remember correctly, mix a potion that allows you to jump high into the heavens, literally leap from one important quest location to another by jumping through the clouds. Crazy to watch.

But yes, I can't imagine it working well in POTC.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

You can try a Woodes Rogers one. That's quite linear.
The Gold-Bug even more so.

 

[Levis]

Feel free to do the speedruns would love to see it. Altough there's a large chance any exploit you might find will be fixed XD.
You could set different goals like:

- Complete standard storyline
- Get Tier 1 ship
- Get X amount of gold
- Become level X

just to name a few. all would require vastly different strategies.

 

[Grey Roger]

A basic speedrun would just be to rush through a storyline, concentrating purely on the storyline quests and not going off doing anything else. "Hornblower" is probably another suitable candidate - it's a linear storyline and although it's been made a bit more robust so that you can do some side quests, you are recommended not to do so. You should be able to complete the story without needing to branch off and do additional stuff.

 

[Levis]

I do sugest the "time" which you record would be the ingame days passed. we could very easy have a attribute set at the start of a storyline and have a number somewhere in the interface showing how many days/hours/minutes your character has spend in the caribbean. That would be more fair because of loading times which can vary.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Only important once people start competing to do it faster though.
You can also just manually write down the starting and ending date and time.

 

[Grey Roger]

Or you can just post a savegame. The filename includes the game date on which it was saved. The start date is that of the storyline.

 

[fjx]

Well, I have made a speedrun of stock POTC using the well-known in speedrunning community Livesplit software. I have uploaded it to YouTube (look down below). Over 4 attempts I managed to get from around 3,5 hours to 1 hour 48 minutes 51 seconds. Since nobody has ran this game so far, I can say I set the world record. I've done the basic any% category which means getting from the very start (pressing "new game") to the ending cutscene in this case. I have sticked to the classic speedrunning rules which are:
1. No help from outside programs (only Livesplit is allowed because it simply tracks your time and progress, doesn't affect the game in any way)
2. No changing any game files outside the game except for setting the resolution so it matches your screen
3. No use of any cheat codes/hacks/trainers/console commands/developer mode
4. Stock game with no mods unless it's a speedrun of a mod
5. Making use of any glitches/bugs/inconsistencies/mistakes/errors left in the game by developers is considered perfectly fine

Here's my run, please say what do you think of it, I already have ideas for some other categories like getting all quest officers or finding all special gear (swords/guns/spyglass), but right now I'm way too busy to do that (cause I'm moving to study in Australia in a week). I would very much appreciate some healthy competition. Cheers.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Wow, that DOES sound like a record! That's some enthusiasm you've got going there.

I added it to our PA! YouTube channel now; hopefully that'll help get you a few more views.

 

[fjx]

A quick update, I found out my speedrun actually NEVER WAS A WORLD RECORD. The record is over 1 hour faster, belongs to some Russian guy and was uploaded before my run. The important fact is, in the Russian version you can speed up time on land with no mods, hence such a big difference. Well I guess the English version record is still mine though, below's a video of the actual WR, cheers.
Also, that guy has some MAD skills at this game, so I think I would've lost even on fair terms.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Wow!

Well, that's the Russians; some of them are REALLY into these games!
And right they are!!