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Speedrunning SG

Loading times vary : the computer I'm stuck with is good enough to allow me to record SG in 720p 30fps, so I guess it's not absolute trash, but I still lose 3 seconds per loading screen compared to the one I used before.

funkyhellboy, consider it's hard for some characters because we didn't find the right strats yet. Think like a speedrunner. You have the right to complain about it, consider it as a run killer, say that you hate running with that character, say that it doesn't have easily exploitable tools to wreck the AIs, but stop saying we can't speedrun them.
Edit: ok, you didn't really say that, but I don't want to see that kind of opinion anymore.
EDIT: changed the OP again back to the original until we agree on something about loading screen.
 
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If you want to add this:
Valentine Story
  • Match 1 Peacock
  • Match 2 Parasoul
  • Match 3 Painwheel Rival
  • Match 4 Cerebella
  • Match 5 Ms. Fortune
  • Match 6 Filia
  • Match 7 Double
  • Marie
 
Not the best time but just wanted to begin one in case someone else wanted to give it a try.
Valentine's Story in Sleepwalk difficulty. If I did the stopwatch thing incorrectly then let me know and I'll redo it. OBS was being craptastic in some parts but did not disrupt the time, simply the recording.
 
Edited two of my posts on page one that deal with bella strats to make them readable and updated with latest strats.
Still not complete, I need some additional testing for some characters.

Keep up the work, 6-Let! Can't wait to see the nightmare difficulty strats (because for sure you got some...right?)
 
dragonos451 said:
Edited two of my posts on page one that deal with bella strats to make them readable and updated with latest strats.
Still not complete, I need some additional testing for some characters.

Keep up the work, 6-Let! Can't wait to see the nightmare difficulty strats (because for sure you got some...right?)
I will. Learning the AI at the moment and will do a Nightmare Arcade.
 
I don't know if it still works like this on the PC version, but on xbox you had to complete every story mode to unlock Valentine's story mode which then unlocked Double's. A full speed run could be starting from a new save and ending with Double's ending? ~4 mins per character would end up as a sizeable ~48 minute run once eliza's released.

I'm kind of interested in this cause I'm pretty sure I could find faster damage strats, but I have tried and failed before to set up and use wsplit. How do you guys actually make use of it?
 
I like the idea of having to do everything from a blank savestate.

If I could make one suggestion, wouldn't it be better to start the timer from the first black frame following character select, and stopping it on the first black frame after beating Marie? It's just a little more precise than "after choosing your character", even if you still only start/stop the timer by hand.
 
Vadsamoht said:
If I could make one suggestion, wouldn't it be better to start the timer from the first black frame following character select, and stopping it on the first black frame after beating Marie? It's just a little more precise than "after choosing your character", even if you still only start/stop the timer by hand.
For now, we start the timer when we hit the button to select the first character. As there is no palette choice or anything, it's the same for everyone, and it's easier to time (just press at the same time lp and the wsplit start key) than starting on first black frame. For the end, I have to admit hitting the button right when marie dies isn't very practicle (got tricked once and hit it when she actually wasn't dead). Maybe ending on first credit roll frame would be ideal, but usually in speedruns, we end it on last input but obviously it's not easily applied here...we'll have to discuss it further.
 
Age said:
I don't know if it still works like this on the PC version, but on xbox you had to complete every story mode to unlock Valentine's story mode which then unlocked Double's. A full speed run could be starting from a new save and ending with Double's ending? ~4 mins per character would end up as a sizeable ~48 minute run once eliza's released.

I'm kind of interested in this cause I'm pretty sure I could find faster damage strats, but I have tried and failed before to set up and use wsplit. How do you guys actually make use of it?
As soon as we find the techs for every character, the all-char speedrun will definitely be a goal.
About faster damage strats, go for it, no run is actually very optimized for sleepwalk, and only mines are for nightmare difficulty, so go for it m8.

About wsplit/set up, we'll need some more precise questions to help you.

Happy to see it got people interested ! :D
 
dragonos451 said:
usually in speedruns, we end it on last input but obviously it's not easily applied here...
I think this is a terrible idea anywhere it's done.

Eg in Super Metroid the timer stops right as you're facing forward on the ship, which generally means that for something like a 45:45'20 time, you'll have to rewatch your 60 FPS recording to see whether it wasn't really a 45:44'99 and you just pressed your WSplit Hotkey too late.
Much better idea to have a "Run ends, but we don't actually split until X a few moments later" thingie.
 
My idea with black frames is simply that if you need to check times then you can always cut the video at the black frames (seeking to black frames is a pretty basic function that most video editing software has) and find the runtime that way (at least to within 2 frames of error at whatever framerate you were recording at).
 
Marie actually seems pretty buggy. I tried doing something similar dragonos' bella strat on her and I think I paused as she transformed or something. I know I got hit out of the recovery of dynamo which was nice. but the weird thing was she lost her aura and seemingly most of her attacks.

 
I think it just happens if you combo her past stage 2 and force a direct transform from stage 1 to stage 3

I think the bella pattern was dp+hp qcf+PP... j.hp land j.lp j.mp j.hk land j.lk j.mp j.hk land lp-lp mp hk dp+hp qcf+PP
 
Age said:
Marie actually seems pretty buggy. I tried doing something similar dragonos' bella strat on her and I think I paused as she transformed or something. I know I got hit out of the recovery of dynamo which was nice. but the weird thing was she lost her aura and seemingly most of her attacks.
Yeah, already did a little vid about that back on page one.
If you kill her first AND second phase in one combo, she has to go through 2nd phase AND be in 3rd phase at the same time. No wonder why she's bugging like crazy.
On a side note, in this special state, she acts like in 2nd phase but lose all her shadow attacks, servant summons still work correctly.
Also, as you can see, you can keep you combo going after passing through the 1st phase-2nd phase limit, but passing the 2nd-3rd will make her burst whatever happens.
This is only possible in lower difficulty settings, else she has too much health.
 
Age said:
I think the bella pattern was dp+hp qcf+PP... j.hp land j.lp j.mp j.hk land j.lk j.mp j.hk land lp-lp mp hk dp+hp qcf+PP
I don't do the j.hp, I think going directly for j.lk j.mp j.hk loop gives you more chances she will not counter you during the combo drop between dynamo and the air chain.
 
I'm actually cool with having that bug in the game, because when you get into the mid-level difficulties you're going to have to judge whether you've taken off enough health already to finish two stages in the next combo in order to make the third stage easier, which should add an extra dimension to the runs.
 
Did a few timed runs but no recording. My best was 3:03:27 Cerebella sleepwalk story mode. Timing from pressing the button to select the character to the fully black fade out after marie dies.

I think the key to getting really quick kills is to constantly do single high damage hits as frame traps. This is because counterhits give a 50% damage boost to that first hit, meaning more chances to get that bonus means more damage. The rng will be immense since a blocked frametrap (rare on sleepwalk) will cost time and a perfect run would basically be every single hit being a counterhit.
 
That's why I don't really like sleepwalk, I feel like nightmare is way more interesting
 
How do you guys cope with the extreme amount of RNG running a fighting game? Doesn't it feel like running an unseeded roguelike or something?
 
Tomo009 said:
How do you guys cope with the extreme amount of RNG running a fighting game? Doesn't it feel like running an unseeded roguelike or something?
For arcade mode, that's true. Even the kind of team you face will impact your time (as solobella, every time i run into another solo, I can consider I lose 5-10 sec). That's why we're gonna concentrate on story mode.

I can't really tell for other chars, but for bella, I start every round doing the attack that gives me the most chances to get a hit (between 50% and 75%, usually), then I do the reset that works 95% of the time when performed correctly, switch to the corner reset when needed, it works 98% of the time, I end the round after 3-4 resets...
RNG in unseeded roguelikes is waaaaaay worse, so I can't complain. For SG, it's more like a series of bosses like the one you meet in a plateformer. You mostly hope for the right patterns. You got the right ones? Good you get a good time. You got the wrong one? Well, you lose a bit of time.
I think fighting games are really more compatible with speedrunning than roguelikes, tbh.
 
So I started playing around with nightmare story mode. It's a big annoying, especially Marie but I have a couple of ideas.

Each character seems to have some tendencies at the start of the round that make certain openers more likely to succeed. Parasoul especially loves to eat lock and loads. I also noticed that Valentine really likes teching out of the corner, where most characters don't even bother ground teching (so blue bounce otgs could actually work)

Some potential strats would be for Fortune to go for an early snapback and abuse the vulnerable head for double damage. Against duos (val/bella in bella's story mode) I think the key is baiting an assist as the point character gets low but I'm not sure how to make the ai want to call it.

Against Marie I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with ideas. Following dragonos' pattern seems ok but I'd prefer to know more about her triggers to really optimize it. One thing I did think of is using the pause button to run option selects in response to the waves she calls. So you can do the dp motion and press start and she'll say the line that she was about to say then if a reflect would be better than a cerecopter you can press start then LP and it will come out. Still gotta work on it but it's an idea.
 
Age said:
Each character seems to have some tendencies at the start of the round that make certain openers more likely to succeed. Parasoul especially loves to eat lock and loads. I also noticed that Valentine really likes teching out of the corner, where most characters don't even bother ground teching (so blue bounce otgs could actually work)

Some potential strats would be for Fortune to go for an early snapback and abuse the vulnerable head for double damage. Against duos (val/bella in bella's story mode) I think the key is baiting an assist as the point character gets low but I'm not sure how to make the ai want to call it.

Against Marie I'm having a lot of trouble coming up with ideas. Following dragonos' pattern seems ok but I'd prefer to know more about her triggers to really optimize it. One thing I did think of is using the pause button to run option selects in response to the waves she calls. So you can do the dp motion and press start and she'll say the line that she was about to say then if a reflect would be better than a cerecopter you can press start then LP and it will come out. Still gotta work on it but it's an idea.
About fortune snapback to get the head : very good idea, I think we could find a nice combo that will use that. Will probably be a one reset-one kill.

About assist bait : kinda random, the other problem will be to ensure getting a hit on val when the assist comes out, as she tends to block a lot. A grab will not allow you to get the assist so...meh, we'll see.

For marie : the pause OS idea is not really relevant, what she says isn't really related to what she does, and the time passing between the moment she speaks and the moment the attack comes out (when it comes out, sometimes she just trash talk...) is kinda random...and usually too long to make an OS useful. Still, interesting idea.
Her patterns are pure random on 1st and 3rd phase, but I have an idea for 2nd : she will 90% of the time do the bitch slap shadow attack when your close, and it's deflectable.
So after killing her 1st phase with my combo to get her to the corner, you can look for the proper spacing to mash her with titan knuckles, be just close enough to trigger her close attack, and be just far enough to ensure max damage from a deflect. That would probably be the fastest way to kill 2nd phase.
 
Tried quickly to find a use for the anti-fortune snapback tech. Would probably be very good for a lot of chars, but bella is not the greatest character to use it.
Best I got was :
Round start positions
Kara c.mp mgr snapback
Dash c.mk j.mp j.hk
C.mp s.hp (may hit the head if you are lucky)
Run stop c.lp c.mp s.hp (will hit...2/3rd of the time) copter (last hit should get the head whatever happens)
Otg c.lk c.mp titan knuckle deflector
Mgr c.lk c.mk titan knuckle (TK only hits the head, while the body crosses over)
...and it takes exactly as much time to kill that my usual tech (mgr dash c.lk c.mk j.mp j.mk mgr devil horns reset)...
Diamond drop c.lk c.mp titan knuckle copter. Should kill on TK except if you got unlucky and no s.hp hit.
Getting the two s.hp to hit is not really reliable, mostly depend on the exact restand timing you use.
Bella really has few moves that can hit the head, and spacing need to be quite precise so I can't find anything better for now.

Still, other chars should definitely look for that kind of combo, it will help them way more probably.

BTW, @Age, be sure to check the two posts I did on page one that compile all the bella techs I use for now.
 
• Best time for duos : 12 min 28 sec (according to video, as final split was triggered late)
using Big Band with cerebella by @@FunkyHellboy

Oh wow I was trying this the other day and I can beat your time by 2 minutes :0 I'll record it soon.
 
he lost a lot of time screwing up against marie iirc, so killing marie on first try almost guarantees you beat it if you go for the usual techs...

I'm so displeased I have to wait for September to get back to duty. I want to have fun again.
 
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I figure you can add this to the "here's some strats" sleepwalk story mode section
Valentine
  • Dash towards your foe (except if they jump towards you) and do the following: cr.HP (launcher)> air HP> air dash cancel> HP (you'll drop the combo on purpose)
  • Repeat that sequence over and over again. You'll be guaranteed to land a counter hit 40-70% of the time.
  • If they're down to 30% of health or lower, do Checkmate Incision :QCF::PP: blockbuster to save time.
  • For Marie
  • On her first stage: Do air HP> air HK> air dash cancel> air MP (this combo will keep her stunned and unable to fight back so be sure not to drop this sequence)
  • Second stage: Do air HP> air Heavy Savage Bypass (this will interrupt most of her shadow attacks and dodge thru her dead servants)
  • Third stage: Do air Checkmate Incision blockbuster over and over until she's dead. If somehow 3 blockbusters don't kill her then do air Heavy Savage Bypass right after the 3rd one and that should do the final touch.
 
Arcade Mode/Sleepwalk Difficulty/Duo in 7:50.13
Notes:
- I'll come back into it in a few weeks because I know I could've done better. But I'm glad I did in under 8 minutes.
- After doing cr. HP, do light Brass Knuckles and Lock n Load assist at the same. Do a cr. LP> cr. MP> cr. MP and drop the combo, rinse, and repeat. Doing that sequence is a good way to time when to call Cerebella out without falling. This sequence is just about flawless but still needs further testing.
- The point of this speedrun is to never left your enemy fall to the ground and continue to restand them. Therefore you won't need to do anything else and you'll KO each enemy within seconds (expect for solo but you'll finish the entire round quicker than a team).
- In case you're wondering why am I typing all this? I want to see someone else try it with the tools I just provided. So why not give it a try and have fun? :D
 
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6-Let said:
So why not give it a try and have fun? :D
Finally someone with the right mindset!

This thread is one of the very few things that makes me want to play other characters than bella. But I think if I start another char for speedrun purpose, it would be parasoul.
I'm glad you keep doing this





(but I'm still waiting for the nightmare difficulty techs :p)
 
6-Let said:
Arcade Mode/Sleepwalk Difficulty/Duo

Vid
Hmm..just watched it, gonna give some thoughts :
- it should be obvious, but never ever use brass hp. Even against marie. Use only when you know you need it to kill the last character of the ennemy team.
Against sleepwalk marie, I think lp brass may even be better than mp brass because of the recovery.
AIs almost never tech, so even f you already used otg, hp brass still means waiting through the entire sliding+wake up animation.
- your tech is probably one of the better possible ones in the corner (could use some more combo drops, but it's only a timing issue), but midscreen it really could use some improvement. Cr.hp is still the best idea at round start but you need something to keep the opponent from flying away frow you. For now, your tech means 2 secs of dashing towards the opponent without dealing any damage after doing cr.hp brass + assist.
I read in BB general discussion that you can do cr.hp emergency brake into combo. So a thing you could do is round start, cr.hp EB c.lp (only the first hit) s.mk (1 or 2 hits, I don't know) j.mp j.hp. Then maybe calling the assist to make it hit after the combo ended and doing mp brass after BB land may bring the opponent directly in the corner and allow you to start the corner loop with otg c.lk c.hp.
Also, if the opponent blocked the cr.hp like parasoul during the 6th(?) round, emergency brake will allow you to go immediately for a cr.lk or something to open guard as quickly as possible.
- on incoming : don't cross down super, you probably lose 1 or 2 secs just doing that. Just do s.hp or c.hp, you will never get air super'd.
- against marie, remember the further you are from the corner, the more damage lvl3 deals.
Dashing back at the start of 3rd phase then doing lvl 3 may have granted you the kill directly instead of leaving her with a hundred health.

Still a nice start.
 
dragonos451 said:
Hmm..just watched it, gonna give some thoughts :
- it should be obvious, but never ever use brass hp. Even against marie. Use only when you know you need it to kill the last character of the ennemy team.
Against sleepwalk marie, I think lp brass may even be better than mp brass because of the recovery.
AIs almost never tech, so even f you already used otg, hp brass still means waiting through the entire sliding+wake up animation.
- your tech is probably one of the better possible ones in the corner (could use some more combo drops, but it's only a timing issue), but midscreen it really could use some improvement. Cr.hp is still the best idea at round start but you need something to keep the opponent from flying away frow you. For now, your tech means 2 secs of dashing towards the opponent without dealing any damage after doing cr.hp brass + assist.
I read in BB general discussion that you can do cr.hp emergency brake into combo. So a thing you could do is round start, cr.hp EB c.lp (only the first hit) s.mk (1 or 2 hits, I don't know) j.mp j.hp. Then maybe calling the assist to make it hit after the combo ended and doing mp brass after BB land may bring the opponent directly in the corner and allow you to start the corner loop with otg c.lk c.hp.
Also, if the opponent blocked the cr.hp like parasoul during the 6th(?) round, emergency brake will allow you to go immediately for a cr.lk or something to open guard as quickly as possible.
- on incoming : don't cross down super, you probably lose 1 or 2 secs just doing that. Just do s.hp or c.hp, you will never get air super'd.
- against marie, remember the further you are from the corner, the more damage lvl3 deals.
Dashing back at the start of 3rd phase then doing lvl 3 may have granted you the kill directly instead of leaving her with a hundred health.

Still a nice start.
Thanks again for your feedback and input on how to improve when I try again. I'll definitely come back here to remind myself before I try the speedrun again.
 
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dragonos451 said:
Finally someone with the right mindset!

(but I'm still waiting for the nightmare difficulty techs :p)
It's harder than you think broski D: but still working on it.
 
6-Let said:
It's harder than you think broski D: but still working on it.
No worries, take your time.
 
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