Shadowrun returns! By harnessing the true power of magic (known as RNG manipulation), this run eclipses the previous any% TAS by 39586 frames (11 minutes).
In order to save all that time, some cuts had to be made:
- No Matrix -- this time, we're going crude.
- No Rianna, No Marrs, No Walking Bear -- but Ricky does make a cameo.
- No Passports -- why bother when we can sneak into Salish-Shidhe through the backdoor.
The Route
Background
The previous TAS showed off a basically ideal run of the any% route used at that time. Almost immediately after that TAS was published, klaxon set the RTA WR with a significant route change. By opting to blast open corp doors with frag grenades, we eliminate the need to enter the Matrix just to do CPU crash. Based on my knowledge of how the RNG works, I offered up a real-time viable RNG manip that could force an encounter with a frag grenade dealer before leaving Redmond. It was at that point I started to theorize how some of our more obscure knowledge of the game could be used to save time.
Shaman Guide
A shaman guide may be encountered randomly within Salish-Shidhe. He can transport your party to either the AmerIndian village or Sinsearach for a small fee (75Y for the village, 200Y for Sinsearach). Normally, this would be a great way to reduce walking distance within Salish. Extraordinarily, you can encounter him outside of Salish, allowing for transport into Salish without needing a passport.
There are warehouse buildings in both Puyallup and Downtown Seattle which share the same event types as the Salish-Shidhe caves, facilitating this warp. Chance of the event happening in those locations (or anywhere within Salish) is 3%. The assumption was made in the initial routing that this event could be exploited at several points throughout the run.
Nuyen Route
Thanks to the shaman guide, a ton of nuyen can be saved by skipping passports (500Y each) and taxi rides into Salish (100Y each). Even factoring in the incurred costs of the guide, the savings is more than enough to eliminate the need to hire other runners, especially considering a skilled decker is no longer required for the route. Nevertheless, Ricky is still a lucrative hire to fund the first half of the run.
To cover the rest of the nuyen-critical part of the run (up to the Ito battle), we still need over 650Y. We're able to net 200Y in trading Stark's items for shotgun & armor. While we could retain his medkits, we'll take the cash early and try to replace them with random drops. For a bit of extra cash, you can pick up a randomly dropped fetish (15% chance, only drops in Council Island) that sells for 257Y. Then, by taking up a courier job along on route, we're able to earn 185Y and a karma point. The remaining 18Y can be covered by a single random drop (20Y in Downtown, 10% chance).
Karma Route
Joshua needs reputation level 4 to get into Club Penumbra. There's a hard karma requirement of 18 to raise that stat, 14 of which is guaranteed by completing tasks up until the Ilene "rescue". A 15th point is earned after 1 kill (due to a counter bug), and an additional point is earned after every subsequent 16th kill. After we earn 1 point for the courier job, we only need 32 kills to earn the remaining 2 points.
Glitches & Exploits
Double Kills
If a player character lands an attack on an NPC that reduces the target's health to zero, the party gets credit for 1 kill. There is a brief time after such an attack lands when that enemy is still open to be attacked. If another player character can land an successful attack on that same enemy during that time, the party gets credit for an additional kill.
Of course, there are a few factors that determine whether the 2nd attack is successful (or can can be attempted at all). In practical terms, this usually depends on the target's defense vs. Joshua's attack (his being weaker compared to Stark's). This run earns 13 double kills towards our quota, so we're able to pick up all the kill-related karma needed from just 20 targets.
Automatic Character Actions
Any characters in your party that are not active will move and act under cpu control. For example, in combat, inactive party members may attack automatically. When the active party member is moving around, the movement patterns of inactive party members can be less than obvious. By frequently swiching between characters, it's possible to steer them using small staccato movements. In some cases, this technique is used to set up quick room exits or sometimes to preempt auto-actions in combat.
RNG Manipulation
This game is a fairly straight implementation of tabletop Shadowrun rules (presumably 2nd edition), so the RNG is mostly just simulating dice rolls. Random values are served on demand, so the RNG counter has to be motivated to advance. So, we'll break down the ways this may happen.
Random Events
Random events come in two forms: combat spawns and narrative scenes. An event is generated when the event clock that rolls over, about every 17 seconds. This clock runs constantly, except during load transitions. When a rollover occurs, an event may be generated under the following conditions:
- Player is active on a game screen where random combat could occur. This is anywhere characters may freely move about, excluding interiors of bars/clubs.
- Combat mode is not active (typically when no enemy is present on screen).
- There are no active enemies accounted for (these can be off screen).
- The active player character is not buffed by invisibility.
- Event check is passed by a random roll: 3 out of 8 (37.5%). In caves, this doubles to 6 out of 8 (75%). This roll won't happen unless all other conditions are met.
Depending on the event generated, subsequent rolls may be needed to further randomize the chosen event, determine success of the player's action, set up combat, etc.
Note, there is a bug regarding the active enemies count mentioned in the conditions above. This count does not get set above zero when entering Licourtrix's cave. Because of this, it's important to not kill any of the strikers in that cave or else you will be locked out of random events and therefore miss your opportunity for a shaman guide.
Combat Actions
As may be expected for an RPG, combat demands a lot of dice rolls. In battles with 6 characters, this can get pretty chaotic. It hardly seems necessary to understand the mechanics in detail. For example, a single untargeted shotgun blast fired outside of combat may demand over a dozen rolls over the course of a couple frames. Within combat, a targeted shot would demand defensive rolls as well, which could double that number. Also, character attack rates could reach up to once per second. So, the approach to combat in the TAS is better left to trial, but there are other factors that may be used to steer the outcome.
Collisions
Dice rolls are used to negotiate character positions when one character moves to the same point as another. We'll call this a "bump". The character that is being bumped will roll for a random direction to move. There may be additional rolls needed in case of conflict. Again, it doesn't seem worth trying to dissect this. It's easy enough to put the player characters in position where they may bump each other back and forth in order to motivate the RNG in a semi-controlled fashion.
Miscellaneous Rolls
There are certain places where the RNG rolls outside of normal gameplay. In both the Pocket Secretary menu and the Terminal, the RNG rolls 3 times per frame, presumably to randomize graphical elements on the screen. It's trivial to delay by frames on these screens in order to motivate the RNG with a fair bit of control. In certain situations, a bump may be used as a means of fine adjustment following one of these menu screens.
Manipulations Guide
This is an incomplete list of manipulations performed in this run. There are some subtle delays and bumps done to avoid random events that are not worth mentioning. Also, since combat RNG is so erratic, it may play an indirect role in some manips. But, normally these are followed up by a more direct manip actions, like bumps.
Salish #1
- Joshua bumps a pedestrian during the walk from Icarus Descending to the warehouse in Downtown to manip a shaman guide to the village.
- Movement is slowed down on the way to Owlfeather due to random combat. Walk speed is adjusted here as a manip to avoid subsequent random events during the long walk.
- Pocket Secretary is opened to manip a guide to Sinsearach. Also, the Heal spell is equipped at this time for purposes of the next manip.
- Joshua casts Heal on himself multiple times to manip a guide back to the village. Some aimless walking here while we wait for the next event cycle.
Penumbra
- Delay at the terminal before Penumbra manips an easy courier job offer. Joshua bumps a pedestrian after arriving for fine adjustment of the RNG counter.
- Pocket Secretary is opened coming out of Big Rhino to manip a frag grenade dealer. This needs fine adjustment as well, so Joshua casts heal on himself immediately before the event fires.
- Walk speed is adjusted on Mitsuhama 1st floor to allow a random event to trigger just before Joshua runs into the guard, as there's a much better chance of success on the Company Man event.
- RNG is already set up to get past the camera and guard on the 5th floor. By timing the grenade toss, we manip a good damage roll to escape via death's door.
- There's less chance of failure in Fuchi on the return trip. RNG is set up to avoid combat delays and manip another successful death grenade.
Salish #2
- Delay at the terminal before Puyallup manips a guide to the village. Joshua & Stark bump in the Puyallup warehouse for fine adjustment.
- Joshua & Stark bump after visiting Lady Gillian to manip a guide to the village (again) to get back to the terminal.
Council Island #1
- Terminal delay, bumps and combat rolls all contribute to manip a gargoyle encounter (8% chance) immediately after talking to Spirit Eyes. We got the horn!
- Bumps during combat here lead to a medkit drop and end with a fetish drop on the way out. Our nuyen route requires the fetish drop before our next visit to Spirit Eyes.
Downtown
- Terminal delay & bumps manip a hellhound (+ vampire) encounter (4% chance). Additionally, 20 nuyen drop (also required by the route) is manip'd from a pedestrian on arrival.
Council Island #2
- More bumps to manip another medkit drop. This one will end up not being used, but it doesn't really waste time since we're bound by the event cycle.
Downtown
- Terminal delay & bumps manip a guide to Sinsearach. Combat rolls are also a factor, as we pick up a few kills during the walk.
Salish #3
- After meeting with the Elders, Joshua & Stark bump to manip a Wendigo (x4) encounter while also avoiding other events.
- Combat rolls and bumps manip a guide to the village after meeting Licourtrix. Prior to this, Stark wastes a few shots in order to allow a quick reload right before the Mako battle.
Penumbra
- The Mako showdown in Club Penumbra is chaotic and fast. Using bump manips here, the fight starts with an insta-kill on the 1st target. Also slight movements are made to force enemies to shoot each other where possible. Stark takes light damage.
- After the fight, Stark wastes his remaining shot to force a quick reload before the Ito battle.
Downtown
- The Ito showdown in Matchstick does not disappoint. Stark gets in position to shield Joshua. The right-side alignment also puts the striker in position to absorb shots coming from the back. Stark takes minimal damage.
- Joshua & Stark bump before exiting Matchstick to manip a guide to Sinsearach in the warehouse. The preceding combat leaves the RNG counter in great position for the manip; there's barely any time to do much else.
Renraku
- Character switching to sneak past the guard on Renraku 1st floor. Joshua gets through and leaves Stark in position to auto-walk straight into the guard and spin the RNG counter. Hardly neccessary but pretty hilarious.
- On the top floor, there's a bit more character switching to avoid another sleep-deprived guard.
- Pocket Secretary menu is slightly delayed to manip the attack of the guard as we dismiss Stark in preparation for our grand exit.
Ellisia's Tomb
- Plenty of bump manip in the antechamber in order to keep Stark from taking damage and keep Joshua alive. Some extra bumps by Stark set up RNG for the Thon battle.
- At the start of the Thon battle, Joshua gets blasted immediately -- this is fine. Stark just needs 3 good shots on Thon before he retaliates.
- The RNG is set up to allow Stark to heal Joshua using a single medkit, which is better than anticipated. Note, Stark does a manual reload here, which will give him just enough shots to finish off Thon.
- Stark moves behind Thon for cover and starts firing. Thon needs to target Joshua, not Stark. He's only able gets 2 attacks off, and Joshua is able to auto-heal to survive it, which is not required but hey -- it's a happy ending!
Future Improvements?
There's unlikely to be time saves without a significant reroute. While time could potentially be saved in the segment before the guide out of Puyallup, it's unlikely to cut the event cycle. Most of the critical event cycles are cut fairly close (within 2.5 seconds).
As for reroute potential: You earn 3 karma from the last meeting with the Elders. If you route this before the Mako-Ito run, you can eliminate the need for most kills. Naturally, the nuyen route would need to be reworked. It's uncertain how much time could be saved by avoiding the extra combat, since that part of the run is quite event bound. It's seems worth considering, but note, eliminating the kills would impact the entertainment value of the TAS.
(Technical details regarding the RNG, including event and drop tables, have not been publicly released but are available upon request. You may contact the author of this TAS directly with any questions or requests for info.)
DrD2k9: Claiming for judging.
DrD2k9: An 11ish minute improvement is very impressive. It's not often 1/3 of a game of this length is cut out of a run. Accepting as an improvement over [4707] Genesis Shadowrun by Daelixx in 31:23.76.
Note to Publisher: This file includes button presses to advance through the credits, which don't advance on their own. I spaced these button presses out for roughly 5 seconds for each credit screen. Feel free to adjust as necessary for appropriate publication.
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