Game objectives

  • Emulator used: PSXjin v2.0.2
  • Completes Orcs' story
  • Plenty of bloodshed to save time

Intro

Warcraft II Tides of Darkness is a Real Time Strategy game focusing on the war between Orcs and Humans. Originally released for PC in 1995, an expansion "Beyond the Dark portal" followed shortly after, which included new Hero units and an additional 24 levels. In the PSX version, the game includes both the original and the expansion, and instead just goes under the single title "The Dark Saga". This means up to four potential runs could be made for this game, with this particular one completing the original 14 Orc levels.

Tricks and Techniques Used

Full details of the game can be found at http://war2.warcraft.org/strategy.shtml , but here are some noteworthy tricks.

Understanding Movement

Characters can move to any adjacent square in a single move, even though intuitively a diagonal move seems to have displaced the piece more. This type of distance measuring is called a supremum metric, and makes it a lot easier to map out paths. It means a horizontal path can waggle up and down, or vertical ones left and right without affecting the time it takes to reach the end. This means there's a multitude of different paths to get from A to B, all of which equally fast, so optimising movement is somewhat easy.
In spite of this however, units don't have the best AI in the world. Often units will block each other when they cross paths, or will persistantly change their mind on which route to take, according to which squares are occupied or not. This means plenty of micromanagement has to be done here, making sure to do it in as few clicks as possible since each new order will pause the unit for a brief moment.

Repair Glitch

While a peon is constructing a building, due to the fact it hasn't gotten to 100% hp yet, you can use other peons to 'repair' it. This will increase its hp, effectively shortening construction time at the cost of resources. Generally speaking this is a bad idea, since it wastes precious lumber and occupies a peon who could be doing something useful elsewhere; but once your income rate is sufficiently high you can begin to use this.

Bad Aiming

Attack units have a strict hierarchy on who to kill first, favouring more powerful ones which are in range. Moving units in/out of range will confuse an enemy, which if done correctly can be used to kill him without him ever landing a single hit. And in fact, often these attacks can be evaded anyway. Powerful units like ships, catapults or cannons towers can do quite a bit of damage; but have slower, less accurate aiming as a result. A moving target can quite easily dodge these attacks, or for an even bigger challenge can manipulate them into acting as friendly fire; having a human unit move into splash zone and taking the hit instead.

Lag

The game can lag quite easily, most apparently so during Level 4. For some reason having the camera positioned along the top or left edge causes constant slowdown, which makes it harder to control combat along those areas. On simple escort levels where there's nothing better to do, I must admit I tried to remove a few small lag frames. Sadly that just means the 'stare at black screen' tactic, which in hindsight was a bad tradeoff, so for that I apologise.

Level Commentaries

1 Zul'Dare 1:57

Despite being the first level, it's certainly not the quickest. It is however the level with the least to be done though, which means quite a bit of downtime needs filling. A brief tour of a peon's abilities should be keep you occupied for now. Enjoy the calmness while it lasts though, since future levels demand so much attention that there's never a moment to spare.

2 Raid at Hillsbrad 0:55

You can't just tell Zul'jin to go to the exact spot where the Circle of Power is, considering units won't know how to navigate efficiently if you tell them to go into unexplored territory. Trying to guide Zul'jin step by step will mean a delay each time you give him new directions, so a neat trick here is to just give him a single command: to follow a grunt who's further ahead. Then you can guide the grunt all you want, and not worry about his little pauses slowing down Zul'Jin himself. Destroying his prison from above may save 1 square worth of walking, but nothing significant.

3 Southshore 4:32

Levels like this are always a head scratcher, trying to balance peon numbers with income rates. Could more peons mean building things faster? We'd need more farms, but would they pay for themselves? Could more income mean building another oil tanker, or another shipyard closer to where's needed? Variables, so many variables, but in the end a rather comfortable solution I reckon. Just remember that with a goal of 4 oil platforms to be completed, it's only the time of number 4 which truly matters. Feel free to build platforms 1-3 when you want, since it won't affect your income rate and thus when platform 4 can finally be afforded.

4 Assault on Hillsbrad 7:21

OK, the first decent level now, where we finally have the freedom to transverse seas and attack at will. Well, once we get enough grunts that is. Sadly we don't yet have access to anything capable of doing significant damage to buildings, so it's gonna take a while to do it with grunts alone. It's also the only real time to take advantage of the repair glitch, since at this early stage of the game there's nothing better to spend resources on. There's no expensive upgrades to save up for, nor second tier of advanced buildings to make, so that's about the best use for our peons for now. Well, that and sending us a jolly message.

5 Tol Barad 8:33

Having survived the first attack, we now have a bunch of nearly dead grunts who sadly cannot fight anything without their life hanging in the balance. This means the attack on Dun Modr needs to be much more conservative. Got to be really careful what we attack, as to not draw the attention of the entire island; and got to rely on the catapult to perform our kills. Kinda easy though given it's a TAS, just watch how the Attack Ground option can be used to anticipate enemy movement for a rather amusing killathon.

6 The Badlands 0:36

This is supposed to be an escort mission, needing to destroy your way through half a dozen Alliance camps, each of which protected by thick walls and swarming with enemies. Yet for some strange reason, there's a convenient path running around the lower edge of the map which is free from all roadblocks. This means it requires only Cho'gall to make a heroic dash for the end, for a rather quick finish to the level.

7 The Fall of Stromgarde 7:15

Quite a generous level here, the starting army alone is enough to kill pretty much the entire alliance base, that is of course all except for one Guard Tower. By the time the rest of the base is destroyed, our army simply cannot take any more, and would just be marching to their deaths should they attempt to destroy it. So this means our peons have to work hard building an entire base just for the sake of training a single catapult, since there's no time to make anything else after.

8 The Runestone at Caer Darrow 1:52

Only the Castle needs to be destroyed to claim victory, which is conveniently reachable by our initial Juggernaut. Barely any skill needed here as we can just wait for it to get demolished by our most powerful unit; while a few suicidal ogres claim the Runestone for us.

9 The Razing of Tyr's Hand 5:27

Here we have another nice level, where you don't have to just destroy everything on the map to claim victory, but just do a bit of construction. Thank god for evasive manoeuvres, otherwise there's not much chance of our 2 ships managing to destroy all that stuff for us for us.

10 The Destruction of Stratholme 9:22

Well, got to destroy an alliance base, consisting of both land and sea units. Oh god, sea units; that means we'll have to spend ages constructing a base, considering our initial army can't swim very well. And with a mere 3 peons to work with, it'd be kinda silly expecting them to do all the hard work. More peons are only available once we have enough farms for our troops, and considering the size of our army that may take a while. Great, so time to "thin out our numbers" it seems; considering that base building is by far the bigger priority here. But all of this happens before the alliance base is even fully destroyed, which means we've got to return here later. But considering all of our cash is needed for ship combat, there's really none spare to get another land army, so to help finish off the land section a more unorthodox solution is needed. PS, a sapper takes out 5 units, gotta love that!

11 The Dead Rise as Quel'Thalas Falls 7:43

We start with a rather small army, and it's not like a few ogres can kill everything, especially considering how well guarded their base is. We can't compete with all the towers, archers and ballistas guarding the entrance; so rather than waiting for reinforcements a better idea is to just blow up the wall and sneak in through there. This bypasses most of their security, and gives us something to attack while we wait for the others. And lord only knows how badly we need those others, since not only is there the base to destroy, but also several archer packs scattered throughout the level. Sadly, you never get to actually see them though, since the amount of coordination needed here is just insane. Managing so many units all over the place means the camera is practically always in motion; but you can still hear screams plus see the occasional corpse nearby, so rest assured those battles went well.

12 The Tomb of Sargeras 7:46

And now we face units with magic, the biggest threat of all. Technically speaking the previous level should've had mages, but we managed to destroy the base before they showed up, so hah. Anyway, the first few Death Knights can be destroyed by sappers; but by the time you reach the later ones they've saved up enough mana to start casting spells, their favourite being Death Coil. This has huge range and lethal effects, and as always our poor army cannot withstand such demonic power. At this point there's no real counter to such a spell, our only option is to just go suicide somebody. At times like this, we need to call upon our greatest resource: peons. Peons only exist to serve their superiors, so they'll make a worthy sacrifice. LOK'TAR OGAR, GLORY TO THE HORDE!

13 The Siege of Dalaran 10:48

Finally, things slow down a bit, so you can actually see what's happening here. The slowish nature of this run stems from the fact that the entire place is littered with towers, which at this point can only be destroyed by our catapult. Around half of the buildings in here are towers, packed densely enough to gaurantee death to anything which comes in range. This severely limits progress, as there's very little we can do while those towers bar our way. There's the occasional Knight to kill, wall to demolish, or ballista to manipulate, but rarely enough to keep our army in constant battle. Plenty of time to do each section as wait for catapults to fire, and peons to finish making ship stuff.

14 The Fall of Lordaeron 11:14

And now for the climax, which is by far the most annoying, unforgiving and irritating level of the run. You spend ages carefully guiding your units into getting perfect shots, turn your back to help some other dope, only to turn back again to learn that your initial shots have now missed their target. Oh god the RNG is so stupid on this level, requiring so many reruns of each section before finding one that works. But you think that eleventh or so tactic works? Of course it doesn't, because everywhere is now mysteriously under attack from flying gryphons.
That's right, there's 3 gryphons flying around the map, whose attack patterns are not just the basic "attack stuff in range" commands; but are more along the lines of "attack at random times, for no reason whatsoever". This puts both our islands at high risk, not to mention our sea units too. How to manipulate that AI though? The simple act of moving any unit on the map seems to have a profound effect on it, making them change their minds on when or where to attack. This means pretty much every command issued in this level had to be carefully cross checked with the gryphons, making sure each one doesn't put us in any danger. Of course, the danger isn't necessarily immediate, since it may take up to several thousand frames for them to make their attack. So should we keep that input or not? Currently we'd die if they did attack, but then there's always the chance that by filling these frames by continuing the movie, the gryphons may not even attack at all. Or worse still, they may attack even sooner, who knows. So if it's not the outcome we want, which section should we try redoing?
Yeah, so in addition to controlling peons on three islands, lonely troops who were left behind, a low hp transport under heavy attack, current juggernauts who don't look for work, new juggernauts requiring orders, grunts insisting on chasing other units into an ambush, peasants who need manipulating into repairing and thus being in killing range, a mage who insists on slowing the catapult, a Paladin who tries to destroy it, and a ballista who needs manipulating into killing said paladin; this all has to be done in a manor which not only keeps us all alive and well, but also manipulates not one but three different gryphon riders into magically staying out of our way. Needless to say, that's quite the challenge.
In homage to watching so far, I offer you a sheep sacrifice to appease our demon masters.

FOR THE GLORY OF THE HORDE


Noxxa: Judging.
Noxxa: Added YouTube encode.
Noxxa: Well received run. Tool-assisted speedruns of real-time strategy games are quite rare to see, which makes this run quite unique. Accepting for Moons.
feos: Publishing...

TASVideoAgent
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Post subject: Re: #4020: Flip's PSX Warcraft II - The Dark Saga "Orc Levels" in 1:32:51.75
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TASVideoAgent wrote:
Mothrayas: Judging.
Well that didn't take very long.
Post subject: Re: #4020: Flip's PSX Warcraft II - The Dark Saga "Orc Levels" in 1:32:51.75
Noxxa
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DeHackEd wrote:
TASVideoAgent wrote:
Mothrayas: Judging.
Well that didn't take very long.
31 seconds is short enough for you? Anyway, I'll have a try at HD-encoding this.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
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Voting no because the author is a horde.
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waiting for encode,i'm lazy.
TAS i'm interested: megaman series: mmbn1 all chips, mmx3 any% psx glitched fighting games with speed goals in general
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I'm excited to watch the encode!
Noxxa
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grassini wrote:
waiting for encode,i'm lazy.
Riddim wrote:
I'm excited to watch the encode!
Encode is up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fl4GEuV6Ezg
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
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Oh, hey! Thanks for the encode! Will watch the run. Though, I'll request an encode that skips loading screens. The main part of the TAS is in the gameplay itself, not the wait of loading. I'm pretty sure viewers won't mind an alternative encode where it goes to the next level much faster. Like, say... Just a few frames of black. There's a lot of downtime between levels. Skipping this downtime wouldn't take away from the viewing of this nice run. Unless you can somehow convince everyone that watching the loading screens are necessary to the flow of the game and allows the viewer time to contemplate things like "what did I just watch" and "the answer to life, the universe, everything", I'm pretty sure that having an alternative video with the loading screens edited out will go appreciated. Still, thanks for this encode now. Wonder if there's a convenient memory address to read that would suggest loading screens to make it easier to skip them all automatically. Now I'm curious what percent of the video involves loading.
Noxxa
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FatRatKnight wrote:
Now I'm curious what percent of the video involves loading.
Based on rough timing, the loading time from one level to another is roughly 30 seconds. The campaign has 14 levels, so that's about 7 minutes' worth of loading screen. 7 minutes on a 92 minute movie is about 7.6%. Which is...not a whole lot, to be honest. I'm pretty sure there are some runs which are much worse off in that regard.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
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Well, maybe not all that terrible a percentage in loading, but I know someone who was bothered by it. Regardless, it's just a request. I'll appreciate it if someone does go through with it, but I can understand if there isn't a large need for an alternative that skips the loading.
Joined: 1/26/2009
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Yep that's a pretty good work, particularly I loved those dodging move. Oh and I also think that an alternative encode without load screen would be more than welcome. Now, what about these advanced campaign "Beyond the Dark Portal", any plan to do them? :)
darkszero
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That was impressive and nicely well done. Voting yes. However, some things that I find this movie lacking:
  • Killing a critter with the power of your clicks.
  • Pissing off your units with your clicks.
But I don't know if either are present in this version.
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All missions are impressive. Awesome work! Would be great to if you will do TAS of "Beyond the Dark Portal" too. Btw, Why two free peons at 15:45 were not used for attack buildings?
I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Current projects: NES: Tetris "fastest 999999" (improvement, with r57shell) Genesis: Adventures of Batman & Robin (with Truncated); Pocahontas; Comix Zone (improvement); Mickey Mania (improvement); RoboCop versus The Terminator (improvement); Gargoyles (with feos)
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FatRatKnight wrote:
Though, I'll request an encode that skips loading screens.
It's called forward seeking! It's best with a video player like MPlayer. You play your video, you see the loading screen, you press "right" and suddenly you jump ahead 10 seconds in the video. Press it three times in quick succession to skip 30 seconds. It's just that easy to skip loading screens.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Warepire
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This was really entertaining, and in my opinion even a candidate for Star to represent what RTS TASes can look like. A big yes vote from me.
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Man, Blizzard had way better music composers in the good old days, kinda sad seeing the shitty music their new games feature (WoW, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 and to a lesser extend, Warcraft 3). A shame the Battle.net edition of Warcraft II, Starcraft (Maybe Diablo 2?) and newer games use shitty low quality MP3's (128kbit! amazin' yo!) though. The original Warcraft II and expansion pack feature much nicer quality CD Audio. Oh also, Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, WoW and to a lesser extent Warcraft III all mostly feature passive/ambient music and nothing very engaging or exciting. Heck Starcraft 2's music is mostly sucky ambient versions of Starcraft 1's songs cause they couldn't think of anything new.
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Finally a Warcraft TAS! That was amazing. Great work!
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franpa wrote:
Man, Blizzard had way better music composers in the good old days, kinda sad seeing the shitty music their new games feature (WoW, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 and to a lesser extend, Warcraft 3). A shame the Battle.net edition of Warcraft II, Starcraft (Maybe Diablo 2?) and newer games use shitty low quality MP3's (128kbit! amazin' yo!) though. The original Warcraft II and expansion pack feature much nicer quality CD Audio. Oh also, Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, WoW and to a lesser extent Warcraft III all mostly feature passive/ambient music and nothing very engaging or exciting. Heck Starcraft 2's music is mostly sucky ambient versions of Starcraft 1's songs cause they couldn't think of anything new.
yeah but i can't run the old one with audio on my pc so it's even worse than shitty audio. yes vote for vault pls
TAS i'm interested: megaman series: mmbn1 all chips, mmx3 any% psx glitched fighting games with speed goals in general
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Human levels too please!
Why, oh, why do I even <i>try</i> to understand my own species?
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I really enjoyed this TAS. This is a game I played a lot as a kid and it was really interesting to see it cleared so quickly. This TAS has a lot of fun stuff - crazy resource management, fast action, and complete domination of enemies. For some reason I kept thinking of an ant farm as I watched all the peons running around... Some of my favorite moments: * All the silly voices, and how they often overlap each other when you're giving rapid orders ("Ahoy! Ahoy! Ahoy!" "Very-very-very well." "Yes-yes-yes-yes master."). Also... "Zug zug"! * Any time you trimmed your army down for the purpose of resource management ("you guys have served me well, now it's time to die") * Other silly things (like slaying critters during idle times) * Taking advantage of the enemy AI to get friendly fire hits or just make their attacks miss constantly Some levels were a bit long but there was always something going on. I was certainly entertained the whole time. A big yes vote from me!
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Heidman wrote:
Voting no because the author is a horde.
Agree, although I vote yes.
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I request that the branch is changed to "Orc Campaign".
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grassini wrote:
franpa wrote:
Man, Blizzard had way better music composers in the good old days, kinda sad seeing the shitty music their new games feature (WoW, Starcraft 2, Diablo 3 and to a lesser extend, Warcraft 3). A shame the Battle.net edition of Warcraft II, Starcraft (Maybe Diablo 2?) and newer games use shitty low quality MP3's (128kbit! amazin' yo!) though. The original Warcraft II and expansion pack feature much nicer quality CD Audio. Oh also, Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, WoW and to a lesser extent Warcraft III all mostly feature passive/ambient music and nothing very engaging or exciting. Heck Starcraft 2's music is mostly sucky ambient versions of Starcraft 1's songs cause they couldn't think of anything new.
yeah but i can't run the old one with audio on my pc so it's even worse than shitty audio. yes vote for vault pls
Pop it in to a CD player and you can hear the music fine, that's one of the great things about games that used CD Audio. Can listen to it anywhere you have a CD player.
Ryzen 3700X, ASUS Crosshair VIII Hero (WiFi) Motherboard, 32GB 3600MHz RAM, MSI Geforce 1070Ti 8GB, Windows 10 Pro x64 http://tasvideos.org/Nach/FranpaAlert.html
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Truly an amazing TAS. I can't even begin to imagine how complex and annoying it must be to make it. I loved how you took care of idle time, such as spelling LOL with peasants for example. The way you dodged enemies and made them target a dummy while the others were beating the enemy to a bloody pulp. Much fun. Hope to see more in the future! Thanks for making it.
Joined: 8/23/2008
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This was a really fantastic watch. Well done. Definite yes vote. Abusing the AI was quite impressive. May I inquire as to why you chose to run the PSX version instead of one of the PC versions + Hourglass?
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