The Elite Forum
The Big Three Plus One => GoldenEye 007 => Topic started by: Shadow on August 05, 2014, 12:05:23 pm
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I remember when look-down was first talked about, and how everyone said it would kill competition because no one wanted to see 2-minute videos of the floor. I didn't remember John Kaleta though, so I started hunting through old topics. Found these quotes:
John Kaleta [second post ever, mentions lookdown in passing, something he supposedly read in Marshmallow's guide, Jul 22, 2002]
I have been a ge player from day one. I have been reading the boards for 2 years. I use 1.1 with mini cc, no auto aim and I straf looking down to where I can bearly see the next turn or objective. I can make the goof start talking almost immediately. Later.
Karl Jobst:
I don't like this either [lookdown]. If people continue using this method on other levels [besides Streets] I will quit.
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People just are not suprised with any new wr's anymore. It's like, "yeah, another wr achieved with look-down, big deal." I think look-down has taken the glory out of getting a wr because you know that if you didn't look down you have no chance of getting it. It would have been just one more time that was nearly the wr but wasn't quite there. But still getting wr's like this inflates some people because a wr = glory no matter what the cost or manner of getting it is. The more untied records people get with look-down, the less people care about them.
Bryan Bosshardt: [makes lookdown generally known August 27, 2002]
I believe the looking down will save 1 sec per 75 seconds of mission, at least on Streets.
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These are the only levels that the looking down trick has helped me so far: Surface 1, Surface 2, Streets...
I've probably spent 100 hours on Streets this summer, more than any other level for sure, but it will be worth it once that @#%$ 1:14 comes [excited about lookdown on Streets].
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Looking down does get annoying, but I won't have to use the looking down trick much if I get that 1:14.
Peter Osterland [on Kaleta's claimed 1:58 Streets SA/00A]
Yeah, I would like to see some proof also. 1:58 is a very good record.
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Funny how times change. Well, YouTube and reddit comments haven't gotten past lookdown yet, as we can see with the classic "guy spends hours looking at the ground autistic faggot fuck" comments, so I guess it is an ongoing debate to this day.
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Thanks for posting this, Shadow. Everything historic about this site is interesting.
Insane to think this was 12 years ago
Karl and everybody else's comments reminds me about when Patrik found the BAs on JAP and how skeptic and against it most people were at the time :p but now everybody use it. Same thing with lookdown basically.
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The community has always been against new methods of gameplay.
1.1 CC, Lookdown, 2.x, Extra BA
It's really funny how people just accept it eventually.
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Clark posted against it but then to be fair shortly afterward posted a "we need to progress beyond bickering about this" post that was superb, basically saying that people will always think new innovations are unfair, but competition will continue to press forward.
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People accept it eventually because they don't have a choice. If it's part of the game and will give you an advantage, someone will use that advantage to get ahead and everyone else will be forced to adapt if they want to continue to compete. The evolution of this game has constantly improved the overall time, but it doesn't necessarily make for healthy gameplay.
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An old topic by Wouter that pretty much summarizes the controversy surrounding lookdown shortly after it was discovered: http://forums.the-elite.net/index.php?topic=8176.0 (http://forums.the-elite.net/index.php?topic=8176.0). Very nice read, it's riddled with great quotes.
"The point of the elite IS NOT to get times. The point of the elite is to have fun competing with other gamers who also enjoy competing. You guys have completely lost the plot....
-Karl"
:kappa:
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People accept it eventually because they don't have a choice. If it's part of the game and will give you an advantage, someone will use that advantage to get ahead and everyone else will be forced to adapt if they want to continue to compete. The evolution of this game has constantly improved the overall time, but it doesn't necessarily make for healthy gameplay.
Maybe I'm weird but I feel things like lookdown, 2.x, US vs JP vs PAL etc. all combine to make this a really interesting game to run. Serious amounts of lag management and trying to figure out ways to use 2 controllers at once is pretty incredible.
And despite the weird, hard, and unintended aspects of speedrunning Goldeneye, you have this amazing ranking system that fosters with life and activity.
Good speedgame imo.
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Has anyone really done in-depth analysis on look down, like found what the optimal angle is (is it looking straight down? If so, how much faster is it than 45 degrees?), or calculated how much time it saves on any individual level? The most i've heard is "it saves ~1 second for every minute of gameplay", which is pretty ambiguous and surely doesn't apply evenly in every level. On the speedrunswiki entry for Streets, it just says to use lookdown because "it's really helpful". Has it's exact 'helpfulness' been measured out?
It's a 10+ year old strat so I'm probably wrong in thinking that no one has looked into deeply, it's just not something that i've come across after perusing the forums for a while and talking to other GE players.
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The more straight down the better--Look down better than look up as well. Basically how far you can lookdown and still have an idea of where the hell you're going.
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I think the idea is that you want the game to load as little as possible to the screen, to create the least amount of lag possible.
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It's mostly feel. The top players have it down to an exact science on pretty much every part of all 60 levels. They know the right amount of lookup/lookdown to use for minimal lag, optimal headshots, etc. I'm not sure on the exact amount of time saved though. It's a trivial stat and I doubt it could be measured accurately on many levels.
I've probably spent 100 hours on Streets this summer, more than any other level for sure, but it will be worth it once that @#%$ 1:14 comes [excited about lookdown on Streets]
:kappa:
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exact
I assume it is hard to find exact details, since the look down effect probably isn't present on emulator? Can someone fill me in?
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Yeah it's impossible measure anything. Emulators are remarkably imprecise when it comes to lag.
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Shadow, do you have a handy link to your source? Should be a nice walk down memory lane. iirc a lot of the Great Lookdown Debate unfolded on the original #elite irc, thus may be lost to the sands of time.
tldr: iirc irc
edit- saw the link in typosaur's post that was a good starting point
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The opinion I had 12 years ago still stands.
Look down should be banned :kappa:
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I should have posted the links originally. One was the thread typosaur linked to (which contains Clark's epic post):
http://forums.the-elite.net/index.php?topic=8176.0
The original Bosshardt-public-announcement was this thread:
http://forums.the-elite.net/index.php?topic=8275.0
One questioning John Kaleta's Street times (before everyone realized he'd used lookdown). As a bonus, there is a side-discussion of Clark's observation that looking down before the gate in Dam made the gates slower for some reason.
http://forums.the-elite.net/index.php?topic=8280.0
Here's another with a great post from Clark:
http://forums.the-elite.net/index.php?topic=8242.0
Look-down was definitely a let-down at first, because it seemed like it would result in all records being broken. That is like the worst case scenario for us, because to me, that means that almost ALL effort we've invested would suddenly be a waste. It would be like starting over again, almost. Fortunately, look-down wasn't nearly as severe as I feared. It's only efficiently utilized on easy strafing levels, and it's effects are slight. If it helped much less than it does, I don't think anyone would even bother with it, and many would be skeptical altogether. However, other than the dismantling of Streets, the progression of PRs and WRs since has been exciting, not destructive. New WRs are cannot be solely credited to look-down; this is why I called it a catalyst. It's the causal factor in wave of new agent records (that would otherwise remain unpursued). It created the motivation, and delivered the extra tenths needed. My only concern right now is for Surface 1. it is probably due for a SA/00 make-over, but other than that, I expect look-down to be another tool to what was already in place, not a new paradigm.
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Kaleta aka supernova's posts are amazing. What a luminary, the Father of Modern GE Lookdown. Really wish we kept him around