crowbar-only speedrun of hl2

Videos are up:
http://speeddemosarchive.com/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1212794739

This is a speed run of Half-Life 2 on hard difficulty in 134 segments completed on May 10, 2008 by lowerlogic.

Comments:
Unlike other existing Half-Life 2 speed runs, this run follows 2 extra rules, to make the run more challenging and hopefully more entertaining to watch:

1) I only use the crowbar weapon except for places where you absolutely must use another weapon due to game play mechanics or other scripted events.
2) I don't fly or wall climb.

Therefore this speed run is in entirely different category from other traditional speed runs of Half-Life 2. The running time is about: 2:11:32 (measured from the moment I gain control until the moment the portal explodes).

Segments with other weapons:
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In some places I must use other weapons. Still, I try to keep their use to an absolute minimum so as to keep the speedrun as crazy as possible. I had to use other weapons in 3 places. These include:

1) Map d2_prison_01. To get into Nova Prospekt the wall must explode, and for that to happen the second gunship must be shot down. Only explosive weapons, such as grenades and the RPG, damage the gunships, so I use the RPG as it is the fastest.
2) Map d3_city_10b. To get through this level all three shield generators must be deactivated. The only way to deactivate a shield generator is with the gravity gun. Yes, I tried all sorts of other things - from throwing grenades at them (to be stolen from combine soldiers if it worked) to shoving tables into them in an attempt to deflect the energy orb out of the shield generator.
3) The citadel levels, you must use the gravity gun to get past the several shield generators and to destroy the portal at the end. Where possible I avoid using the gravity gun unnecessarily, except for map d3_citadel_04, where I go absolutely insane unleashing all my suppressed rage against the combine. The HL2DQ route for map d3_citadel_04 uses only 2 gravity zaps and is much, much faster so it is a much better route, however after several days of practice I was unable to come close to matching their awesomeness for that segment.

Misc:
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Like Half-Life 2 Done Quick, this speed run also uses a simple macro to repeatedly press the "jump" key for as long as it is held down.

This run is by no means perfect, and I'm sure another speed run that also follows these rules could improve upon it by at least several minutes and could use the gravity gun far less in the citadel maps.

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CREDITS
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While I, lowerlogic, am the only runner of this speed run, many of the tricks you see in this speed run were largely based of previous speed runs, so I have to give credit to the HL2DQ team for their incredible and also to David 'marshmallow' Gibbons for his two speed runs of Half-Life 2. Without their routes, tricks, inspirations and shortcuts, this speed run would not be nearly as fast as it is today.

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MAP TIMES
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The times are rounded down and do not include _2.dem times.

This post has been edited by lowerlogic on Jun 8 2008, 05:43 AM

Very nice indeed

I assume you're doing this just by yourself?

Yeah right now it's just me.

This post has been edited by lowerlogic on Apr 16 2008, 01:04 PM

Nice job. I really love the jumping tricks like that. Angles are your friend. I think if flying didn't exist, HL2 would be tons of trick jumps like these. I can't wait to see it completed.

Angles are your friend indeed!

It's a real shame they (valve) changed the physics a bit (ie air accel = shit now), and ramps aren't as useful, both compared to quakeworld.

Quake is very different than HL2, obviously


But lowerlogic, good job on the run, man. You just came out of nowhere with all these maps already done, that's awesome! Have you been posting on the SDA forums, or no?

Anyway, good luck! And maybe some people might even try to help you out on phase two!

Thanks for all the replies. I'm not active on SDA or any other speedrun forums. This is actually my first speedrun, hl2 or otherwise, so I'm sure there's plenty of room for improvement for a phase 2 if people want to help out.

If the gunship fires at you, and it hits the tank, it should open up. I managed to survive one time.

Thanks, I hadn't tried that before. Unfortunately I'm already working on Entrapment, but that would definitely be a good thing to add in a phase 2, if that happens.

Nova Prospekt and Entrapment are definitely the hardest chapters so far. The closed spaces, lack of health packs (especially in Entanglement) and lack of objects, often leave you at point-blank with a combine wielding a shotgun. But the constant cheating of death is what's going to make the final speedrun fun to watch.

When playing crowbar-only in these chapters, in several places there are health-speed tradeoffs. In several instances I'm picking a slightly slower attempt in order to preserve more of my health. I imagine a phase 2 of these chapters would require a lot of planning - i.e. deciding where to take a slightly slower route so that you can survive something several segments, or several maps, later, and deciding where to sacrifice some health to use a faster route.

Though the run is still going at a decent speed. At the beginning of d2_prison_07, I'm over 5 minutes ahead of David Gibbons' 2:15 speed run.

This post has been edited by lowerlogic on Apr 30 2008, 12:29 AM

I don't see how that is possible. Its a trigger specific explosion. As far as I can tell, it only explodes when the second gunship dies. The tank itself cannot take any damage nor is designed to explode by damage. You'd have to find a way into the inside area without using that entrance, which I could not find... The only other way not to use a weapon would be to kill 2 gunships only using exploding barrels. Thats it.

I don't see how that is possible. Its a trigger specific explosion. As far as I can tell, it only explodes when the second gunship dies. The tank itself cannot take any damage nor is designed to explode by damage. You'd have to find a way into the inside area without using that entrance, which I could not find... The only other way not to use a weapon would be to kill 2 gunships only using exploding barrels. Thats it.

Oh, that must have been a super coincidence then. :\

I've updated the original post to include my times for part 2. When I have some time in the next several days I'll record some segments to video and post them on youtube.

Part 3 will have some really challenging maps. d3_c17_08 is really tricky, but possible to do crowbar-only. But my main concern will be d3_c17_10b. I only want to use the gravity gun for the 3 generators and do everything else using just the crowbar. I remember doing it before but it took forever. Hopefully most of that time was just trial and error and I'll find a decent route when I get to it.

This post has been edited by lowerlogic on Apr 23 2008, 03:30 AM

Very nice ! Wanna see it finished (i mean phase 1 crowbar run) =)

I recorded some videos of some interesting parts of part 2 of the run and added them to the original post. All the video are longer and include more segments as I'm trying to practice my video editing skills, which have a long way to go if I ever hope to produce a nice finished speedrun.

The first new video is lots of quick tricks for Highway 17 and Sandtraps all wrapped together in one video. I try my best to recreate the amazing tricks done in the HL2DQ run. The last minute or so you see how I get past the Bugbait without a gravity jump or flying.

The second clip is from Nova Prospekt. It's the first time in the run that I do a Dale Jump (mobile collision boost) as described in the HL2DQ tricks. You'll more of it in Part 3.

The third clip is from Entanglement and you'll see that I use a lot of enemy grenades to get through places quickly, including the place where you need to knock down the power cable to lower the shield. The combine's grenade-throwing behavior is pretty random so a lot of it is luck, practice, and using short segments.

The sound gets out of sync by several seconds in all 3 videos and I have no idea why. I'm new to video editing, so if anyone knows of a good video editing program or why this might be happening, that would be helpful. Also I'm not sure how to smooth out the demos properly. I notice that if I set cl_interp to a low value, like 0.0001, the jitteriness with bunny hopping goes away, but it also appears to make the AI animations choppy, so any tips on that would be helpful as well.

This post has been edited by lowerlogic on Apr 30 2008, 12:29 AM

Not bad... Not bad at all!

To smooth demos use these cmds:
cl_interp 0.015
cl_interp_npcs 0.1 <- to smooth NPCs

But for some moving parts, like Combine doors or earthshakers you should use default value:
cl_interp 0.1 <- moving parts moves smooth

After watching that, i'll be totally into running this during Phase 2. Since i didn't get to actually run any of the levels for HL2DQ, i'd really like to help contribute to this. I think the run will be much more entertaining than HL2DQ also, just because of the circumstances from using crowbar only.

I've updated the original post with my times for Anticitizen One.

Map d3_c17_08 was definitely the hardest level in this chapter. In the big room at the end of that map, with the slow lift, it's basically you verse like 12 combine soldiers. Since I don't have access to guns, I basically have to wing it, hopping around the place like a caffeinated monkey and hope to god I can dive into the next box of health packs and save.

In several ways it's harder than the hardest levels of entanglement. For one, the soldiers are all several stories above you, so throwing their grenades back to them is pretty much out of the question in most places. On top of that you have the lift, which turns into a minigame of "build the best fortress out of the 4 barrels on the moving platform or sit exposed to enemy fire for the next ~30 seconds." However, the room has a lot of objects, and several interesting angles in the geometry, so I think a faster (and safer) route is a definite possibility.

I've been working on map d3_c17_10b for about the last 3 days. I knew from the get-go that this map would either make or break the speedrun. Of course I can only use the crowbar, using the gravity gun for just the 3 shield generators. My first successful route through the map took an unimpressive 17 minutes. I've been able to work it down to a little under 7 minutes, and I'll try to get it down to under 5 minutes before I move on to the rest of the speedrun. Which should be relatively easy by comparison.

I've updated the original post with my times for the 2 previous maps, both of which contain some entertaining tricks.

This post has been edited by lowerlogic on May 4 2008, 05:58 AM

I was able to get d3_c17_10b down to 4:51. I've updated the original post with this along with my times for the rest of Follow Freeman. Also, I found a way to skip the striders in d3_c17_13 without flying or using any weapons and happens to be faster than killing the striders, which is nice, so I used that route. It also happens to be pretty crazy and entertaining .

I'm pretty sure it's impossible to keep the crowbar in the citadel levels, at least not without flying into the chamber that takes away all your weapons but the gravity gun, and flying is strictly against my rules for the run. But even if there is a way to keep the crowbar, it wouldn't be of much use, because of the number of combine soldiers and how far away they often are (eg. high up on platforms), and I'd still need to use the gravity gun for the numerous generators in the chapter. So that means it is a crowbar-only speedrun, without a crowbar. So I'm going to stick by my rules and try to use the gravity gun as few times as possible.

So for example a route that uses 8 gravity zaps is "better" than a route that uses 12 zaps, even if the route that uses 12 zaps is faster. If 2 routes have the same number of gravity zaps, then of course the faster one is better. Though I think it will mostly result in a run where I don't unnecessarily harm any combine soldiers, which will fit in with the rest of the run where I often don't have time to stick around and attack anyone (I think I got through Ravenholm killing only a single zombie). Anyway it should still make for an interesting run.

This post has been edited by lowerlogic on May 6 2008, 03:24 AM