Monastery wall secret video with no damage.

[Frag Maniac]

In finishing up my total gold gibbing, I realized there is no video for getting the secret on the broken wall in Monastery using a no damage method, at least none that I've seen.

Since this is a level that requires you stay above 50 health points, I thought it would be a good idea to make one.

This is by no means the easiest method to get to it, but I feel it's the easiest no damage method, and since damage is more of an issue when you're playing Nightmare and Trauma, I figured many playing on those difficulty levels would likely have the skill to use this method. As usual, there's no sound in them, I'm still using just the demo version of Fraps for now.

The first one is getting to the Holy Item, the second one descending from it. Both are best viewed in the default 480 setting of Putfile's viewer, enjoy.:)

http://www.putfile.com/media.php?n=Monastery-wall-secet-0-damage

http://www.putfile.com/media.php?n=Monastery-wall-secet-descent

Eventually I'll get around to making some shoot-'em-up fun videos, but I'm giving first priority to the tutorials, as some have indicated an interest in seeing more.

[Varus77]

Hehe ! ... that is a very nice way - my respect. I'm sure you are the first one how did it on this way. :)

[Frag Maniac]

...damage a different way, by using the PK blades and jump/traversing up the steep stone wall next to the one where the Holy is. Once you get up to a certain point there's a slanted piece on the end of it you can get up on.

That way was too hard with Fraps running though, so I did it this way instead, which is better for a tutorial, it's way easier.;)

[kalme]

I have to a agree with Varus. Never saw that way before and I think it was hard to record, wasn't it? Very nice.

[Frag Maniac]

"I think it was hard to record, wasn't it?"

...the jump is not as difficult as you might think. Sure with Fraps it's a bit harder, but very doable.

I'm so new to these vids, I get nervous making them. I usually do them after playing the game some, so I'm in a rhythm so to speak. The trade off is, I'm also full of adrenaline from the gameplay, and when I add that to the nervousness of thinking "OMG, I'm a noob at this vid stuff, people will be watching them, I better make it look good!", it can take several tries to complete it.

It's really funny too, because I turn off Fraps, and it's not just the FPS that goes up, it's my sensibility of how to make the jump. Like that ledge on the corner of the pillar, when I'm nervous, I keep making stupid hops straight up off the top of it, or off the edge in trying to go around the corner. In the final take you saw, the hops are small and incremental, not so clumsy and deliberate. This you must do to gingerly creep around the corner to that arch which gets you up. The jump from the pillar on the ground up to the corner ledge is easy, it's not a height thing at all, it's not even really a finese thing as much as calming yourself to realize what you must do once you get up to the corner ledge. Part of what makes it a tense situation, is that you can't quicksave on that corner ledge, so you must work fast but yet carefully.;)

[Varus77]

LoL...nice to read. I'm feeling with you - the adrenalin-kill :)
It's not a great wonder with these 30sec limitation of FRAPS demo in mind. It's like a horde monster behind you.

As I've made my earlier movies I've had another problem. My PC went down to 20fps - try this last jump with these rate and it's like an Ascension commando in H3ll... :D

[kalme]

Ascension commando
"suicide squad" :D

[SYS]

...a voice from the darkness.....

Excellent new video there, Frag! * thumbs up * Further back, I also gave a solution in "Experience #1" for that Secret, what also doesn't require any HP. I used a rock for that, and I pushed it directly to the slopy arch via the PK-weapon's blades, but I also tried it where You're trying on Your video. However Your method is better and more interesting I think, since it doesn't use a single movable object for climbing up to the arches! And to be honest, it's a little bit tedious to push that rock to its rightful place... So this is definitely one method again, what I'm going to try out..I'm currently on "Old Monastry", so... ;)

[Frag Maniac]

"It's not a great wonder with these 30sec limitation of FRAPS demo in mind. It's like a horde monster behind you."

...mention, the old scare me with the 30 sec limiter so's I'll buy your pro version trick.:D

Varus, I'm so glad I forgot to say that now because you just gave me a great idea for making my vid attempts less nervous. From now on I'm going to time a couple of successfull unrecorded attempts of each jump, take an average of the two, then add a second or two to estimate the Fraps time. Then I won't be worrying if it will fit easily into the 30 sec or not.

It will also make for a great warm up to doing the recording, and build confidence I think.

I also want to experiment with opening the battle/ambient music tracks with my Musicmatch player, and see if I can record them separatey to later add to each clip.

[Varus77]

That's what a said before...

Open MovieMaker...put in your files...put in some music...mix a nice cocktail...and: Cheers!

[Frag Maniac]

"And to be honest, it's a little bit tedious to push that rock to its rightful place..."

...full Fraps clip of it, I call it the "Slippery Wall" technique. It's by far the hardest of the no damage methods I think, unless you try rolling that rock after it goes down the hill.:D

I managed to do it at least 3 or 4 times without Fraps, just to get the exact route and technique down, but the higher FPS tends to spoil you and just makes it more frustrating.

I had set my Fraps hotkey to V, as I was tired of losing time reaching way up to the F keys. It turned out to be a big mistake, and the reason I wound up with two separate and incomplete clips of the jump, with a slight gap in the middle, I hit the V key by mistake when I was jumping frantically!

Anyway, if I was better at using VirtualDub, I might have pieced them together anyway, but I was so frustrated I just deleted them.

I thought I'd suffice to show you this screenshot detailing the method, as it's definately a doable method with good FPS.

http://img48.echo.cx/img48/8632/slipperywalltechnique4gn.jpg

[SYS]

...a voice from the darkness.....

Frag, You're excellent in "wall-climbing"! :D But that's awesome, even if it must be very hard. Yesterday I tried Your method anyway, and it worked fine: I think I'll never use my "rock-way" again, because Your method is much more effective... Many thanks for sharing it! * thumbs up *

Next time I'll try this new thing too, but I doubt I'll be success. It's OFFTOPIC here a bit, but You surely have seen Cyody's method for one of the Secrets on "Docks": well, I tried that yesterday when I was on "Docks", but I couldn't manage to do it. Maybe I just didn't get enough FPS and/or I wasn't enuogh patient and tenacious... I've mentioned that here, because that also requires some tedious climbing...

[Frag Maniac]

...and liking it a lot! I finally figured out I was just glossing over that easy save to PC thing, as it looked so different from just a drop down box.

All I need to ask now is do I have to go with one of the formats that say Lan? I have sampled various ones including both the Lan and local playback types, and am getting close to a decision. This Movie Maker is definately more efficient in space saving, but I need to know if the ones not labeled Lan will allow it to stream over the net?

So far the variable bit rate used by the High Quality Video (NTSC) is my favorite, which produces a remarkably clear 720 x 480 size movie, but unfortunately it takes the file size only just shy of the 10MB at 11.5, vs the 8.2 of the Divx. Even some of the ones that brought it down to a little over 6MB were noticably better than Divx though, so I'm sticking with it I think.

I'm just glad you and Kalme responded as you did to my questionare before I got caught up in doing ALL the Docks vids, this way they'll be much better.

Thanks much for your help.;)

[Frag Maniac]

"I tried Your method anyway, and it worked fine: ... Many thanks for sharing it! * thumbs up *"

BTW, if you know of a video for the Palace jump to the Holy Item via the jump pad, complit is needing some help with that. I told him about the video for it that used to be on painkillerhell.com, but their domain has expired, and I don't know if they still have a site somewhere.

"You surely have seen Cyody's method for one of the Secrets on "Docks":"

I have not seen this one, just a few of Cyody's stuff. I had some trouble with some of them DLing, so I got impatient. I hear he's got great stuff though, and saw his Forest jump, which was quite good.

[kalme]

Nice method, I haven't tried it myself, but I definately will. And I'm glad you finally figured out how to work with movie maker to get the results out of it you want to.


I told him about the video for it that used to be on painkillerhell.com, but their domain has expired, and I don't know if they still have a site somewhere.
:eek:
This is a sad day for every painkilling fellow out there :(

[Varus77]

BTW, if you know of a video for the Palace jump to the Holy Item via the jump pad, complit is needing some help with that.

...therefore was a scene in my vid "Crazy"...

[Frag Maniac]

I had to rerecord this as I deleted the original uncompressed file. For some reason there's a few detectable artifacts showing up as green dots, where as I did not have this happen using the same method with the Docks descent vid.

I was also a bit clumsier in making the jump, feeling a bit like I have a mild flu lately, and light headed a little, but I'm getting better with the sound, using a fade effect on this one.

(Use the 640 size to view)
http://www.putfile.com/media.php?n=Monastery-wall-secret-WMV

[Varus77]

Oh, I see you'll be better and better... :)
yeah, much more action... ;)

[Frag Maniac]

...vids I'm making is the little green dots flickering. What causes that, do you think I'm using a wrong compression rate or something. I'm using the "Video for local playback (2.1 Mbps) setting, why is it doing this?

[Varus77]

? - What do you mean?
http://img193.echo.cx/img193/8498/snapshot200504281622056hy.jpg (http://www.imageshack.us)
zoom 3x

the little green dots - I guess that you haven't these dots in your original FRAPS movie...and if you'd use maybe 500Mbit compression then would be more of this effect? Then would be there little red dots if you'd make a movie in CoW (because the red background)... ;)

This is normal. Higher compression <> lower quality ;)

^^^ if you meant this

[Mr. Q]

Here's one more video of how to get that secret an this one gets you on top of that big wall. Unfortenatly i can't make a movie while climbing the wall because of the low fps it won't go up the wall but whitout recording it's a easy.
By jumping rapidly and moving fast left and right you'll go up the wall.

http://users.pandora.be/Mr.Q/Monastry%20secret%201.jpg

Video:
http://users.pandora.be/Mr.Q/Monastry%20secret%201.wmv

[Varus77]

That's what I call real hillclimbing a'la PK... :D and a good example to demonstrate what's possible with high fps and otherwise what with low fps is inpossible.

A very exceeding way - never sawn before! WoW

[kalme]

I want working demo recording so badly. That way, fps won't drop, we were able to record all these things and filesizes also were lower, yet providing an even better playback quality.

[Frag Maniac]

...teleportation was one of the functions of the PK weapon! :D

Now if I can only find the switch to activate it.:p

BTW, the 60FPS setting didn't help me much on the Docks vids. Even when I dropped my res to 1024 x 768, I was averaging 35-55 FPS through most of it.

I want to try the latest mpeg4 codec that Quicktime uses for conversion/compression. Quicktime 7 will be available for PC soon.

I read an article just a day ago that tested mpeg2, mpeg4, and WMV. They said the mpeg 4 was the best, claiming the WMV results had too much video noise.

I think noise is what I'm seeing in the clips I'm talking about with tiny green dots flickering. I've seen them in other vids too, not just my own.

The only thing I worry about with Quicktime is PC compatability issues, some are still saying there are much more problems with it on PCs, with system hang and such.

If the latest version works well though, $30 to unlock the player for editing is not bad considering Fraps is the same price.

Meantime, I did find a place to DL Windows Media Tools, which has and uses an mpeg4 codec. I doubt it would work with the latest version of mpeg4 though, it's a different animal.

I find it ironic that Microsoft talks extensively on their Windows Media page about their helping to develope the mpeg4 technology, only to stop offering Windows Media Tools as a DL right after Apple comes out with an editor that uses superior mpeg4 technology, and Sorenson using the H.264 codec.

It's rather obvious Microsofts only interest were in making more devices compatible with their player/editor, and there aren't that many on their list for mpeg4.

Quicktime 7 tech specs.

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/player/specs.html

[Varus77]

I read an article just a day ago that tested mpeg2, mpeg4, and WMV. They said the mpeg 4 was the best, claiming the WMV results had too much video noise.


You are wrong...
The most commonly known MPEG4 codecs are WMV, DivX and Xvid. It's a matter of individual preference which one you use - open source fans would suggest Xvid, mainstream windows uses would opt for WMV.

http://www.videoforums.co.uk/portal.php

I know many players and the Quicktime-Player comes one place behind the horrible RealTime-Player.

[Frag Maniac]

...Quicktime 7 Pro (H.264) is reviewed by unbiased sources against these others. The Sorenson technology is getting raves already, have you read about this particular one? You may be talking about older Quicktime technology, and I'm refering to their Pro version, not the player.

[kalme]

I have to agree with Varus, they are all MPEG-4 codecs. And I also think that of all available media players, Quicktime is by far the worst.