Aquaria Speed Runs **Spoilers**

[Quemaqua]

This thread is awesome.  That's definitely good stuff doing it without any health eggs.

[great]

HOW ON EARTH DID YOU PROGRESS WITHOUT HEALTH EGGS?  Seriously, some of those bosses HURT LIKE THE DEVIL WEARING URCHIN ARMOR.

not really. i think it takes at least 4 attacks from any boss to kill you

energy temple: easy
cathedral: easy
kelp forest: easy

sun temple: no strategy involved. keep shooting and pray you're nowhere near him/spikes once he begins his suction attack
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9216792170826959080&hl=en

sunken city: keep your distance to avoid wraith's attacks. the golem is easy to avoid
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2745240974594252563&hl=en

[Glamador]

Oh HO...switching to beast form...I kept trying to dodge UNDER the golem, it worked about half the time.  I didn't even realize you could dodge above him, he seems to cover the whole height of the room.  Plus every time I tried it didn't work, I guess the trick is beast form.

As for the temple wyrm, that was before I had discovered the usefullness of keyboard form shortcuts.  Strategies kept saying to switch to beast form but I had a bitch of a time realizing he was sucking water in time for me to revert, sing, and trasform again (and vice versa after wards).  Even so he's just freaking hard to dodge.  Gotta know exactly how to handle him I guess.  Good job.

[Alphasoldier]

Well, I made my speed run through, an exact of 2 hours, with every form and without using anything else.
No transport turtles
No treasures
No health eggs
Not even cooking (even though I can't prove that)

Yes, All forms.
Yes, I've died several times.
Yes, I could've shaved off 10 minutes if I didn't save that much.

Hunting for save points sometimes is annoying, I just defeated the Sun Worm and I accidentally grabbed the golden star treasure, without saving first. So I had to kill that bastard again, in the meanwhile I died about 4 to 5 times. =p

Anyway, I uploaded my savegame file, Here it is. It's on save file 22, I THINK you can rename it if that spot is already filled. And the savegame was made at version 1.0.3, dunno if that's relevant.

[Xiagan]

Not bad! Now do an Eternal Daughter run without taking health containers or power scrolls.

[Alphasoldier]

Am I going to get scolded at if I say I never even played that game? >.>

[Glamador]

I tried it, and it was indescribably hard.  I mean, people think the Sun Temple worm is tough?  God I couldn't even get past the first enemy without dying in ED.  Got to this guy riding a spider and I still can't beat him.

[kite]

Bumping this thread because some really should record a full speedrun. It could probably get accepted to sites like SDA, I imagine, which would bring publicity to the game.

To outline the basics, a game like Aquaria could support several different types of speedruns:

-- Fastest completion with any ending
-- Fastest completion with best ending
-- Low % runs
-- 100% runs

afaik the first and the third would actually be the same, since there are no major sequence breaks in the game (hmm.. there should be!) and if there were they probably wouldn't add to the final time. The second would just be the first with a few extra detours that would require the acquisition of Spirit form (not sure about Fish form), and would probably not be as interesting as the first or fourth runs, which for all intents and purposes should be what people focus on.

A good any-% run would probably entail:

-- No extras such as various armors (jelly armor..) or pets or health upgrades. Detours for Spicy / Volcano rolls might be acceptable, since they speed up boss fights.
-- Becoming really really good at bouncing off the walls to travel. It looks silly but it's a huge time-saver.
-- IDEALLY one would be able to navigate the Abyss without Sun form (right?) This isn't reasonable to expect, but it would save a lot of time.
-- I think people have already got the right idea in terms of route: After energy form, go Beast -> Sun -> Nature. Really, the only real choice in route planning is when to go for Nature form, and it seems most logical to do it after you get the turtle by Mithalas. Beast -> Nature -> Sun wouldn't be much worse, though, and if I understand correctly that it's possible to climb up the side of the Sun Temple using Nature Form, it might actually save some time.

Anyways, yea, I'd love to see a real run done according to SDA rules, there's a slight possibility that I might try one myself. But if people are getting to the last boss in just over an hour, that's pretty awesome and deserves a full recording.

[Glamador]

Well maybe someone should make a thread on the SDA forums about it.  They always offer encouragement and assistance.  Of course the trick is to first get some of them playing the game.  Then you can get a good rousing conversation going.

[kite]

Yea, I might go ahead and do that later.. it just kinda seems odd to post a thread about a run that I'd rather see someone else do.

In any case, looking things over, going Beast -> Nature -> Sun wouldn't take any more time than Beast -> Sun -> Nature, barring the possibility that one of them would take an extra turtle trip (I'm not sure which, though.) I'm not sure if using Nature form to climb the left side of the Sun temple would save any time, maybe there's someone way better than me at fast briarhopping though. I'd like for it to be possible just to make the run more interesting, though. In any case, a segmented route would probably go something like:

1: Start to song cave to saving before the "boss" that gives you Energy form
2: Energy temple up to the save before the boss
3: Leave energy temple, go through open waters and Mithalas to the save point outside the cathedral
4: Mithalas cathedral to the savepoint at the beginning of the area with all the currents
5: Leave Mithalas (get beast form), pick up the ancient turtle near it, head to the savepoint before the Kelp Forest boss, getting the Kelp Forest turtle along the way.
6: Get Nature form, take the bulb to the turtle, then the turtle back to outside Mithalas, head up to the Veil, get Li and save at the first Sun Temple crystal
7: Either climb the left side of the Sun Temple to the boss or do it normally (possibly saving before the boss if doing normally, if so this would make an 8th segment, but let's assume we don't..), get Sun Form, leave through the exit in the boss' room, take the nearby turtle back to outside Mithalas, save somewhere on the way to the Abyss.
8: I'm not sure which route is fastest through the Abyss to the Sunken City, but suffice to say one should figure it out and do it, go through the Sunken City, save before the Golem Boss.
9+: Save as few times as possible throughout The Body (the crystal is kinda out of the way), but realistically it'd be hard not to have to do it a couple times. Definitely save before the final gauntlet, after getting Li back.
10: From getting Li back to the save before the final boss.
11: Final boss.

Something like that sounds about right.

[Alphasoldier]

I don't really record stuff, but I know my speedrun without getting anything, besides all forms, not even using turtles was quite a good run if I may say so myself.

 But I'd love to try this out sometime, but after the patch that is. =p

And knowing where to go in Abyss without sunform is how well you know it impossible, it's only pure luck to guide yourself through there without getting swallowed/spiked/attacked. Also that you can barely measure your speed. However using Sun mode a bit could help, but even my gamking skills don't go that far, I screwed up with the abyss many many times.

Then I wonder, what stops you from doing so?

[kite]

Well, I think pretty much any time that would get the ball rolling would be nice, so that people would see it and then propose improvements.. that's generally how these things progress, I believe.

Anyways, I did make a thread on SDA:

http://speeddemosarchive.com/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=pcgames;action=display;num=1206320908

I'm not sure it'll get much of a reply, but it doesn't hurt to try.

[Glamador]

Well for a game as large and long as Aquaria...it will require intense planning and extensive use of both glitches and wall-boosting...perhaps using Briar jumps to defeat the Sun Temple Worm early?  Anyway that's the kind of discussion that needs discussing.

[kite]

I think an any-% run would be relatively straightforward, which is why I took the time to propose a route for it. A 100% run might require more planning, but it still shouldn't be too hard... for better or worse, Aquaria doesn't have many advanced techniques that could be used for sequence breaking. While Metroid speedrunning became famous because things like bomb jumping and wall jumping could be used to completely change the game's flow, I don't think there's anything analogous in Aquaria, save for briarhopping, which is only useful in a few places and might not even save any time in an actual run. But it is, of course, possible that there's some trick or shortcut I'm not aware of, in which case this thread is as good a place to highlight it as any.

Outright glitches are, unfortunately, a much more difficult thing to address. In the SDA thread someone pointed to a guy who had run Eternal Daughter, and who actually had an Aquaria video on his YT account where he somehow used bound rocks to push himself through walls and thus across entire areas. That kind of glitching would be detrimental to the enjoyability of a speedrun imo, but it's always subjective.. in any case, it would clearly violate SDA rules, whose philosophy I agree with: "If it obviously looks like a glitch to an uninformed player, it's out." But I don't really have the right to dictate terms like that, I suppose. But this is the line that allowed bugs like mockballing (moving really fast in morph ball form) to be part of the standard Metroid repertoire, since it didn't look like at obvious error.

On further consideration, I found myself musing that if I were one of the game's designers (*cough*) or maybe just had a lot of money lying around, it might be a good investment to put up a modest bounty (usually around $50 or so) for a speedrun that gets hosted on SDA, which would probably give the game exposure to thousands of people. This would at least make for an interesting precedent, as I don't think a developer has ever offered a bounty on their own game to a 3rd-party site.

[Alphasoldier]

Hmm, I don't know about the bounty, it seems far-fetched and as far as I know Alec, he usually doesn't care that much for these things, but then I'd be speaking for him, while I shouldn't.

Anyway, nonetheless, I'd love to record a speed run, If you could recommend a screen recording thing, propably fraps or something, I'd give it a shot.

And yes the rock warp thing was also posted on here. =p