------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ CURRENT/FINAL VERSION ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ = Info Date: 04/09/2012 Time: 9:20 Segments: 11 Difficulty: 1 - Beginner Version: Original 1.1 DOS version of UFO: Enemy Unknown without any modifications (apart from being cracked) Programs: Played and recorded in DosBox 0.74 Youtube: here = Done! This is the third and final installment of my UFO speedrun, surpassing the previous 13:20 by four minutes. I don't see much room for any significant improvements and - unlike previous runs - there aren't any cringeworthy mistakes, so I guess that I'm finally done with it. = Gameplay notes - Basic setup Both Interceptors are "sold" right at the beginning, because I don't use them at all and they have high maintenance fees. - Attack on the landed UFO I needed to raid a ship that would give me three things - Elerium supplies that would suffice for the whole game, heavy plasma gun for shooting through the walls on alien base and a live alien to research 'Alien origins'. For a speedrun, the best choice was a small, undamaged UFO with a few aliens, so I went for this one. - Alien base discovery / snatching the leader and commander Following the advice on SDA forums, I sent out a ship to discover an alien base through the "patrol" command (already knew its location). The mission itself was somewhat tricky - after dozens of attempts, I was still waiting for the commander to bring his lazy ass to the control room, which happened quite infrequently and when he finally deigned to come over, he just shot me. It was only after a few hours that I found out that the little fucker is actually in the southern part of the map and I can snatch him super-easily by hiding behind the corner and then popping up out of the blue for a funny stun-rod session. After that, it was a cakewalk. Of course, all the tactical missions were generated over and over again to give me the ideal starting position. For additional (albeit mostly outdated) info, see the notes to the previous run below. = Contact Praise, comments, inquiries and questions � ufo at wtfk.cz ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ PREVIOUS VERSION ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ = Info Date: 04/14/2009 Time: 13:20 Segments: 13 Difficulty: 1 - Beginner Version: Original 1.1 DOS version of UFO: Enemy Unknown without any modifications (apart from being cracked) Programs: Played and recorded in DosBox 0.72 Video: Converted to XviD/MP3 from ZMVB files produced by DosBox; I decimated the whopping 70 fps by 2 = Notes This speedrun improves on my previous 29:12 run. I've originally started anew to explore a different strategy (wait for a very big UFO, collect/capture all the necessary things/aliens in one battlescape mission, oh hello Cydonia, ?????, PROFIT!), but ended up eliminating all the little time-consuming fuckups from previous run and throwing away tons of useless stuff, like... yeah, like shooting down UFOs. - Alien base on Earth I found out that the heavy plasma can be used to destroy thin walls around the control room (unlike any other weapon that I've tried), which saves a great deal of time because you don't have to go around the whole block. However, it takes some time to research and manufacture the guns and clips. In case you're wondering why I'd skipped first 10 rounds, it's because the fucking commander starts cruising around the map after the fight begins and then he apparently returns back to the control room, where I need him to be. I've found out that the aliens like to use PSI attacks on two specific people from my squad, so I left them in the drop zone (you can't see it in the run, but PSI attacks were so terribly annoying that I considered starting the run all over again just to have a base mission with a different alien race). Epic escape scene is improvised. - Cydonia Took me about 10 attempts to get the map with drop zone located just next to the landing site and about 5 attempts to get a map with alien control room close to the drop zone. After optimizing the route for an hour or so, I found out that the easiest possible way is actually the best and takes me to the control room in 20 seconds (!) without any hassle. There's about 10 % probability that the laser will damage the brain, but since the route is super-quick, it's not really something to be frustrated about. This might be sped up a little by shooting the Blaster Launcher from the doors all the way up to the brain, but I doubt that it would save any time, because tens of seconds would be wasted by collecting, researching and manufacting the gun. = Possible bugs/improvements I'm not sure if "Alien origins" research is necessary to finish the game. If not, capturing aliens in the first battlescape mission has no point at all. Equipping Interceptor with Avalanche missiles is useless, because it never leaves the hangar. I should have sold both of them at the beginning to save more money. Selling all that stuff at the beginning is not necessary. I thought that cleaning the Sell/sack menu of all that junk would be useful later. Well, it wasn't, hallelujah! Since it turned out that one soldier is just enough to do Cydonia levels, it was unnecessary to transport all four of them to the drop zone in the pyramid. ----------------------------------- The video should look like the screenshots below. If it is more blurred, use Virtual Dub, Avidemux or the internal multimedia viewer in Total Commander instead of your default player.