movie: diablo in 3 minutes (tricks)

[phaolo]

Look at this ill genius movie.. diablo in 3 minutes!! (with tricks and planning)

As I don't know if I can add links without risking banning, search:
"speed demos archive" "diablo 1"


p.s: no, I'm not the author (luckly maybe lol)

[Lanthanide]

Here's a link to the page: http://speeddemosarchive.com/Diablo.html

If you click on the underlined "3:12" link it'll take you to a page where you can watch the video in your browser. I zoomed it by 2x to see it at a reasonable size/quality.

This guy says he learned about the RNG in order to make the speed run. The RNG in Diablo 1 is tied to the system time on your computer - if you stop the clock at a specific time and generate a level, you will get the same level generated every single time your system clock is at that time. Identical in terms of layout, monsters and item drops. This effectively lets you dupe items if you replay the same level twice, however with the dupe-detection code in later versions (starting 1.04?) items generated on the same dlvl with the same RNG time seed will still be detected as dupes and deleted.

So basically this guy spent a lot of time finding particular RNG seeds that gave him the results he wanted. This is obvious in that all of the level exits are spawned by the entrances, which while usually the case, particularly in the church and cats, is not always, and sometimes they can be a screen or two apart, while his are always on the same screen and always very close. There are 4 other obvious manipulated seeds:
1) Where he picks up the cursed ring from the sarcophagus
2) Where he kills the lava lord and gets it to drop Naj's puzzler
3) Where he goes to town and Adria conveniently has a stone curse book (he dupes Naj's puzzler and sells it in order to be able to afford it)
4) He kills laz who conveniently drops a thinking cap to give him a higher slvl fireball for Diablo.

Frankly I'm suspicious at this. While it is possible he found particular times for the system clock that allowed these events to take place, the only way to gaurantee these outcomes is by simple trial and error testing different RNG seeds until you find the one you want and then writing the time down so you can use it again later. Can you imagine that someone would really do trial-and-error to find a dungeon layout that had a sarcophagus that dropped a cursed ring right by the level exit? Or a layout that had a lava lord right by the entrance to the caves who dropped Naj's puzzler? Lazarus dropping a thinking cap and adria selling stone curse books would obviously take less time to find, but it's still effort.

So while these events are entirely possible to come across naturally, the results are actually indistinguishable from using a mod created to drop only those items. Ie, it's not hard to create a mod where the only possible item that can be dropped is Naj's puzzler, then simply find a good dungeon layout in the caves where the first monster you kill will drop one, pick it up and continue. Because every level has been filmed separately (27 segements it says), that particular little segment could be filmed in the mod version, and then the rest of the run thenceforth could be played in the normal game using a duplicate/hacked Naj's, and no one would be the wiser.

Creating a mod and doing it this way would certainly be MUCH faster than doing trial-and-error to find the required dungeon spawns that we see. I once created a modded version of D1ME where all the enemies dropped a particular unique crossbow I wanted to play with - that mod only took me about 30 minutes to make, and that was my first attempt at making D1 mods. Incidentally that is the same way that godly full plates of the whale were created - they normally can't drop or even be sold in Diablo, but you can create a mod where they are generated, and then use a character editor to copy the item over (or if you were clever, you could probably create the item directly yourself). There are some restrictions on exactly what you can and can't do in order to keep the items transferrable back to regular Diablo, but it possible to do it.


Anyway, to sum it all up, he is admittedly using RNG manipulation through clock stopping to generate specific pre-picked levels, so this isn't much of a great achievement in my opinion. It's basically like stacking a deck of cards so that you get great hands in poker and bragging about it. Big woop (although admittedly that would be something to brag about, quietly, if you managed to rip off a casino doing it ;))

[phaolo]

Ah, I didn't think at mods! I don't know, usually the site checks all the videos for manipulation. Tricks are only allowed if they are based on game bugs (no cheats or modifications)

But anyway, if it's so easy to build a mod, then in theory all the endeavours on this site too could be fake, no?
I think doubts are always present, but I'll just enjoy the achievement until sure proof.
Anyway, I leave the last words for you experts.
Bye :P

[Lanthanide]

Yes, I did consider that the website probably verifies everything. But in this case a mod really would be indistinguishable from the regular game, and certainly much much faster than trial-and-erroring to find a particular random seed required to get the Naj's in the way that he did.

The easy proof for it would be for him to post the timestamps that he used to generate those dungeons - because the dungeons are always identical with a given timestamp, it would be trivial for other people to check his achievement that way.

And yes, everything on this forum could be people playing mods. Then again why even go that far - simply lie and say you found the helm of spirits or killed D with a clvl 13 character, since no one can really check what you say anyway.


This same guy did an earlier speed run which looked much more legitamate (used 40 segments, though, which is very obvious when he is shopping at Adria) that took 6 minutes something. It's available on youtube if you search for Diablo speed run. In that one he gets a lucky stone curse book and an amulet from some gargoyals in the caves, and then buys a lot of teleport and mana shield scrolls after duping the book for gold.

[Reelix]

http://www.archive.org/details/Diablo_Sorcerer_607

(you can't manipulate drops though, because they're generated upon character creation)

Hmmm ??

If he IS using a RNG to clock-stop for items, I cant find anything on google to replicate....

[phaolo]

Does he mean monster creation maybe?
Anyway, I don't know these RNG info too.. how can a player manipulate damage dealt and received with a missed fireball?? Is he saying that D1 generates fake random numbers starting from player events? But when? And.. very weird method! :shocked:


p.s: ok Lanthanide, but I was referring to the given D2 proofs like screenshots.

[Lanthanide]

I haven't had time to write up a full response to Reelix, but after phaolo's post I'll put in some of it.

In that link he talks about 'missed fireballs' or opening the character sheet as manipulating the RNG. Which is true. But the number of operations per second that use the RNG for making decisions mean that a player being able to directly manipulate monsters behaviour in this manner is a pretty tall ask.

Now if the system clock is locked to a certain time, which the RNG depends on, then you could predict monster behaviour based on your own behaviour (it would always be the same every time you played - much as the dungeon layouts woudl always be identical), but with the RNG running normally such predictions would be practically impossible for a player to carry out un-assisted, IMO.