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Old 28-02-10, 13:43   #298
akci
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Default City of the Dead study

This is another troublesome level, so let me share my experiences of the hardest bits.

At the start do a backflip/roll as soon as the level loads, in a few attempts you can get in the safety of the gateway. From there

take sidesteps right and back left, a couple of shots each time will take care of the guy on the roof.

For completeness sake I released the locusts in the underground area. You probably know that if keep on crawling they have less chance to bite Lara. With a few reloads this fluke can happen to such extent that you get away scratchless. The crevice over the shimmy crack comes handy, it allows Lara to keep on crawling while remains in place.


The water/ice elemental is easy. Stand in one side of the alcove, and after releasing him take a sideflip to avoid his initial charge. Then roll to get down, you have to stand a little forward from the back wall for the roll would take you down, but far enough from the edge that Lara would actually perform the roll. Once down roll again to cancel stumble, because of the double roll you'll be facing the same direction and can run for the pool.
I hope it's clear enough, if not I can make a video.

It may come a little late, but for the LK guys I checked the possibility to skip triggering the elemental.
Who have tried this before knows that Lara either will bang her head on the beam there, or if you press ctrl to get under the beam the jump will be too short.
Well, that underwater pool can be jumped across. The trick is not to use ctrl. Jump to one of the triangular corners.

You have to take an S turn while you run-up for the running jump. The reason for this is that you want to start your jump a little away from the wall, but turning toward the wall at the same time. So when you hit the wall midair, in this low angle Lara won't bounce back of course, but bounce forward in about the same angle. You have to hit the wall before the beam, that way the jump will be lower, enough to get under the beam. Unfortunately that also makes the jump shorter, but just not as short as if you have used ctrl. Then keep right pressed to make Lara play a vertical skipping stone on the wall.

And you will be able to reach the closest corner of the triangular tile on the other side.
Here is a video of it.
(link will be added later)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLRvffrGgg8

The next interesting bit, concerning no-scratch is the jump with the bike at the top of the staircase. Don't run all the way up the ramp, take a small right turn before you reach the top

and you can land in the right part of the opening without injury.

Now the hardest part, those machine guns.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mytly View Post
about 6-7% health loss. I don't think it's possible to do better than this ... but no doubt, akci will be along in a minute to prove me wrong.
It took more than a minute, sorry about that.
And thanks for your confidence in me.

This area is like a twilight zone of Tomb Raider. There are many oddities about the machine guns. Some places they hit Lara when she runs, but not when she sprints, and vica versa. For example if you sprint along the left wall

the guns will start shooting at Lara much sooner than if you just run or walk.

Here, if you stay exactly on the line between the tiles they have a blind spot until the mark, even if you walk.


But these were just some prominent examples, basically every square inch of this area has its own tale.

So alternating sprint and run was the solution. To rule out human error from my part I used the feature when Lara (literally ) runs out of the sprint bar she takes a few running steps then a few sprinting steps again.
Fortunately the street is long enough to set the correct starting position.

Also, I provide a savegame from that position, as both the distance and the angle have to be absolutely precise.
There are four saves, savegame.1 is the starting position. Just start sprinting, that's all.
By a fluke the guns sometimes cause less injury, within reasonable amount of reloads, say 30-50, you can do it with 2% health loss.

I also made a video of it, including dealing with the machineguns afterward. (will upload later)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s8Qvh6Au9Y

Unfortunately that 2% health loss is the best I could do this way, even by several hundred reloads. Still, because of the nature of the fluke I believe it is theoretically possible to do it with 1%, or even no health loss at all, but the odds to that must be astronomical.

Savegame.0 in the package is another machine gun study, just crouch and see what happens. It seems when Lara is at the very edge of the sight of the gun it hesitates, starts and stops firing in regular intervals.

That interval can be used to our advantage.
When Lara didn't take injury in the first few steps of reaching the target area of the guns, I saved, that's savegame.2.
It seems that hesitation only appears when Lara enters their range, and while staying in it they will fire continuously, the hesitation interval although hidden, keeps counting. I hope it's understandable . I concluded this from the fact that reloading this savegame and keep on sprinting the health loss is always constant, as opposed to the undisturbed dash where it is varied. So it seems the state of the interval is also saved.

That means all I needed is a lucky save, concerning whether the guns would start to fire immediately after reload, or they gave a precious half a second. When you load it keep sprint and forward pressed, with a third finger hovering over F5. After a step or two push F5, and if Lara is still at full health save, to a different slot obviously.

Again, a lucky save is needed, savegame.3 is that. When you load it just press forward and after a step roll. By this time I reached all possible margin for error, so have to time roll perfectly to arrive thusly

without a scratch.

The problem with this method is that it might fall in the category of the load-bug, like the locusts and the freeze bar in TR3.
Mind you it is not exactly the same, it can also be compared to when people saved during reaching in the alcoves in Tomb of Semerkhet while avoiding the scarabs.

So I need a judgment call on this, whether or not should I be allowed to use this trick?
If not, I'll have to settle with 2% health loss.

Last edited by akci; 01-03-10 at 00:17. Reason: links corrected
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