World Record Progression: Half Life 2 (New Engine)

released in 2004 valves half-life 2 has been in the top of many lists as one of the greatest first-person shooters ever made it has a good story great gameplay mechanics and critics and fans both almost universally agree that it's just overall fantastic game as with most great games half-life 2 has developed a large speedrunning scene the group of gamers who raced each other to see who could beat the game more quickly and as with most speedruns this games run has changed drastically over time over the course of several years we've gone from casually dashing through the game to pushing the game and its mechanics to their absolute limits let's look at the world record progression for half-life 2 when half-life 2 came out in 2004 it ran on the Source engine which we know today as the old engine this version of the game was filled with many exploits and glitches that were gradually discovered over the years the most famous one probably being bunny hopping this is a trick where you continuously jump in order to build up a bunch of speed causing it to move much more quickly than normal hardly anybody did speedruns of half-life 2 at this point in time but that all changed after 2010 when valve updated the half-life 2 engine this new engine known as well with the new engine fixed some glitches in the old engine but also created new ones I'll get into that a bit more later but the release is the new engine created to divide there are now two categories that could be ran people could play on the old engine or the new engine and if you go to look at the half-life to leaderboards in speedrun comm today you would see that one of these categories became much more popular than the other the new engine has been ran much more than old engine and as a result the record has been progressed far further so for this video I'm only going to be focusing on the new engine category we'll start by going back to early 2013 while there had been some speedrunslive races of the game that had been done before this point none of them were recorded and it's hard to say for sure if they were done a little older the new engine but the first run with definitive video proof was done by a moose guy on January 4th 2013 moose guys first task was to skip his way through the cutscenes that always appear at the start of the unlike most games half-life 2 allows you to play through the cutscenes still letting you move around and pick up objects while that NPC talks and walks through the rooms however whenever you pick up an object such as a book or a barrel and drop it onto the NPCs head it sometimes teleports them forward skipping the time that it would take for them to walk there the game doesn't care there's an object block of NPCs away they just know that they need to get from point A to point B so it will try to get them there no matter what while this trick was relatively easy to do in the old engine it appears that they partially fixed it in the new engine it was much harder for moose guy to get the teleports but he still found some success with it after going through these cutscenes moose guy got on was playing the game as he moved through into more open areas utilized the trick known as a BH were accelerated back hopping you see one valve attempted to fix bunny hopping with the new engine they accidentally broke it even more moose guy jumped forward and then turned around in midair he then continued jumping backwards as soon as he landed the game was trying to slow him down by adding negative speed but since he was already moving backwards all it did was added more speed to him moving backwards so he was able to fly through a lot of sections by just using a BH and a lot of sections of the game just required a bunch of creativity such as right here when he wanted to jump over this gate that stopped me from progressing through the game by launching off this rock at a precise angle it's possible to land just race that you can just barely make it over the wall it took a moose guy multiple tries to get tricks like this to work despite heavily abusing tricks like a BH mooska I really didn't use too many glitches in this run it was mainly just him using it to gain incredible speed and use it to run into objects in just the right way so that he could fly up and skip through parts of the game that of course combined with incredible skill to fly through parts of the game that he did have to play as quickly as possible all in all moose Chi finished with the time of 2 hours 37 minutes and 58 seconds a very impressive start for sure but I don't think anybody including moose Kai could have predicted the lengths to which the speedrun would evolve over the following years unfortunately for moose Kai this would be the only time he would hold the half-life 2 world record and he only had it for about two months by March of 2013 runner space dad got a hold of the record and he took it down by 3 minutes to 2 hours and 34 minutes he didn't really do that much differently from the sky he was able to save some time by reducing the amount of saves and loads that you need to do you can save your game right before its Upton's to do a difficult trick in half-life 2 so that if you miss it you can reload it right up and start from right before the trick to get another shot at it then you can repeat until you're finally able to get the trick to work since space tad was able to get many tricks more quickly he was able to save some time over mu sky but April 2013 was a bit of a special month for half-life 2 runner Tomsk 45 decided that he was going to try to take over that category and he looked into doing one of half-life twos most famous tricks prop climbing by repeatedly jumping and using an item along a wall you're able to fly up the wall and sometimes get on top of it and occasionally as seen here it can Ollie to be on top of the entire stage and let you skip right to the end of it using this throughout the game it allowed Thompson troll the half-life to record for the month aerobic environment [Music] yes finally newest possible knew it ah nice to 2739 wrong size this is the right place isn't it yeah I got that [ __ ] 225 that's six World Records later at the end of April he had taken the record down by nine minutes breaking the record every few days on average Tom scrap the progression of the record sent a message that he was a force to be reckoned with but he wouldn't last long new engine speed runs of half-life 2 were still fairly new and their run could still be optimized a man named py KN realized this and using largely the same strategies as Tomsk lowered the record two more times in the matter of just two days oh my god it is yes he lowered the record six more minutes to two hours and 19 minutes but one runner had had enough his name was solely jhf solely already had the reputation of being really good at another valve game portal holding the world record in that game multiple times once he began to run half-life 2 he was a natural at that as well and on May 12th 2013 just three days after P ykn got his 219 slowly broke his record by 33 seconds he continued to lower the record down more and more in the coming weeks but there's a little problem with soly almost none of his records exist anymore solely used to live stream is half-life 2 attempts on twitch but most people get a world record when they're streaming they make a highlight of it later which is essentially saving it to your twitch page so it never gets automatically deleted by twitch unfortunately soli never highlighted his world records and when twitch deleted all of his past broadcasts a few years ago nearly all footage of his world records were deleted as well so we're left in a very strange spot today hundreds of people saw him do these runs live back in 2013 but nobody on earth can still see these runs today the only evidence we have of them is from reddit posts or the occasional screencap picture like this one that somebody took when he first got the record with 2 hours 19 minutes and 16 seconds from what half-life 2 runners have pieced together through posts on reddit slowly somehow managed to beat the world record four times in a matter of six days in May of 2013 nobody knows exactly what strategies he used where he saved and lost time or anything that wasn't the final time of the run how much was he abusing prop climbing or abh were there any other tricks he used that nobody knew about regardless by the end of it slowly had taken the record down to two hours 13 minutes and 24 seconds while we can't see his footage today solely was hailed as an absolute beast of half-life 2 and taking him down would be an enormous challenge for any other player a couple of months later in July a project that the source runs team had collectively been working on for years was released half-life 2 done with the high magnitude of velocity it was a run of the game cut up into 200 segments where somebody would record that 120th of a game over and over until was as fast as it could possibly beat and then repeat that for the other 199 segments that they cut the game up into a group of 14 runners collectively helped make these 200 segments and when added up the time ended up being 1 hour and 27 minutes this of course is not considered a new engine world record because it was split up into so many segments and done by so many different runners one of those runners being gawked nack gah Connect had been working on the segmented run for months so he had some inside knowledge of strategies that he could use in a single-segment run to lower Sully's to our 13 minute world record so he began to run single segments and he got the world record by three minutes very quickly [Music] the world record was 10 minutes away from being two hours the glock knack and Sully both had the capability to get it and they both obviously wanted it so that July they went back and forth pushing the record closer and closer to the two-hour mark [Music] [Music] and the reason I blame you because I was reading his dark [Music] sub to 1 hour 57 minutes and 45 seconds the two era barrier had been breached and gone AK was the first one to get there in a description of that run he noted that theoretically somebody could take some more time off the run noting that a perfect run would probably be under 1 hour and 55 minutes here's the thing about speed runners we like to set these arbitrary goals that we think a time can't go under and we like to say that even if the game is sped around forever nobody will ever get under that time and in 100% of the cases I've seen somebody always ends up going under that time meet ovc I'm pretty sure if you casual the [ __ ] my god nice that's ridiculous while he may not have gotten sub 155 less than a month after gog not claimed that 155 would require a perfect run he is able to get within seconds of it perhaps this served as a bit of a wake-up call to gocnak sub 155 was his calling he had to get it his execution was getting better he used fewer save and loads in his movement was stellar he had what it took for sub 155 it was just a matter of time in October 2013 he got within 6 seconds of it disappointing in a way but a world record nonetheless work but a month later it seemed like it was finally going to happen it was coming down to the wire I'm done one second away he was a minute ahead before his last split but lost time trying to do a trick known as prop flying with this statue were using explosion and a prop to launch you way up into the air it took him several tries of saving and loading to get it to work and apparently three days after getting this run he somehow managed to get a 155 flat yeah he peed by one more second without getting sub 155 he was so angry that it didn't even highlight the run so it can't be viewed today luckily for him though a week after that he got this run 53 yes yes it is it is maybe we still have time mr. Freeman yes ah yeah this feels so good July [ __ ] look at those splits literally everywhere was either green or gold green meaning he was ahead of his pace and gold meaning it was the fastest segment he had ever done finally got connect was satisfied over the course of a few months in 2013 he and a few other runners had taken the run all the way down to one hour and 52 minutes Doc Mac didn't want to try to lower it anymore and nobody was up to the task of challenging him a couple of months later though in February 2014 something big was discovered the displacement clip in the scrap yard the player would use prop flung to launch themselves on top of the map pick up the barrel from down below and chuck it off into the distance they would then prop climb up a wall and get into the perfect position from there the player repeatedly crouches saves and loads and eventually clips into the tunnel skipping much of the area and saving several minutes this discovery led to Gok vac and another player ffatv altum Utley taking the record down five more minutes to one hour and 47 minutes it was around this time in April 2014 that sore split was released created by fatalis source split is splitting software that automatically pauses whenever the game is loading this commonly occurs between each new area that you have to load and can vary from run to run so to account for this random difference in timing runners began to time their runs without loads using source split the result was runs that were a few minutes faster than they used to be if this wasn't enough margin 64 found out a way to make certain props lose collision in fact I'll just let you two burly 1ts explain this one to you so pretty much you want to get that table stuck in that door like that it'll hit the door or make it loose collision you crouch into it you move around you'll get stuck then you'll save load you're getting to the floor and now you are in the room after the thing you just keep save loading it's just like the Eloi Oh to skip and now you're done this trick had a potential to save time in several places and could save minutes off of the run when time tooth out loads gawk knack had the record at one hour 44 minutes in April 2014 he had the potential to lower it with prop clipping but how far could he with some help from the rest of the community take it remember that old segments had run half life to done with a high magnitude of velocity that run was one hour 27 minutes 51 seconds surely nobody could beat that segmented run which took a dozen runners 200 segments to do in multiple years all on his own right [Music] 1:40 18 1 39 40 that's funny also what record by almost a minute yeah [Music] okay cool it's 1:30 feature [Music] Oh 1:32 Oh [Music] barely [Music] it seems as if they just arrived a great deal in a small time span family I just wanna say it was really fun the last year to have subbed the segmented run that got me in the speedrunning it's over I guess and I'm gonna be taking a break I'm gonna be taking a break for a year that graph is a little bit ugly but that's okay I wouldn't have it any other way this is where I get off about 20 World Records later gaaah connect had completed one of the most unbelievable streaks of dominance that has ever been seen in speedrunning and at the end of it was a run that was faster than the legendary segmented run although it would eventually be retimed to be slower due to a rule change in the future he said himself he was going to take a break for at least a year from running half-life 2 and his records just seemed too daunting to challenge finally half-life 2 had been pushed to its extreme as the months passed players began to search maybe doc nack wasn't unbeatable half-life 2 was a really long game there must be something that could be done to beat him in June 2015 when Gok nack was in the middle of his world record streak speed runner chilly and such discovered a way that you could clip through the ground using a bed in prison oh six the problem was you needed to put the bed in an extremely precise spot for the trick to work and if he didn't get it to work it would kill you so Gok NACA didn't use it in his runs but after gocnak was done in December 2015 players revisited the trick and a person named Rama figured out a new method of clipping known as wood clipping if you saved again just as the game finished loading during clip your velocity would be preserved ultimately this made the bed clip in prison no 6 much easier and using this trick with the bed clip could save up to 4 minutes chilly and such who discovered the bed clip in the first place decided that he might as well try to beat Gough back since he could save 4 minutes with that one trick alone and on December 15 2015 chile became the first person in nearly a dozen world records to knock knock knock off the top spot in half-life 2 with one hour and 26 minutes but he didn't highlight it are you kidding me he just got the world record for the first time ever and he didn't even bother highlighting it why on earth would he do oh because he beat that run on his very next run by about two minutes thank you for the follow yeah that double world record though so yeah Chile and such ended up being incredibly good at half-life 2 from January 2016 through September 2016 he went on a rampage improving the record seven more times down to an hour and 15 minutes this was partially thanks to more methods of clipping being discovered allowing the player to clip out of the train at the start of the game and skip part of canals o3 since then a few more players have come and gone Deathwing ua and rain tnt brought the record down to 114 and 113 respectively but as recently as September 8th 2017 Chile and such was able to get it back once more oh actually it is and that is the world record progression for half-life 2 half-life 2 definitely has one of the most unique histories of any game that has ever been spedrun most games had a history that started a long time ago with gradual changes to the world record that happened over a large period of time half-life 2 on the other hand only started in about 2013 but since then there's been about 70 World Records and the time of the run has literally been cut in half we're down to an hour and 13 minutes right now but who knows what this game has in store for the future are we gonna eventually see a run under an hour at some point thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Summoning Salt

Views: 1,969,447

Keywords:

Id: NdkzjHEjIyA

Length: 24min 17sec (1457 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 18 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/DiseaseG]

The current world record uses that anime singer model for Alyx lol.

[u/captainant]

Awwww shit yeah, I love watching this guy's vids! It ended up being a really neat introduction to the speedrunning scene for me, he does a great job of breaking down the rivalries and challenges in getting the time lower and lower

[u/Upvotes_poo_comments]

I like how he gets me all invested in the dudes speed run for 10 mintues and then next scene is "But that was shattered 15 minutes later by some other dude".

[u/TheOneWithNoName]

At the end there, I'm kind of surprised that they allow modded character models. Seems like it opens the possibility to make that head bonk trick easier.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed]

[u/Dan_Dead_Or_Alive]

The tool assisted speed runs are also crazy for the original Half Life and Half Life 2

Edit: Also Half Life 2: Episode 2

[u/galacticboy2009]

Every time this guy makes a video it's like Christmas.

[u/ElagabalusRex]

Personally, I find breaking games to me more enjoyable than merely running through games. I love livestreamers to just screw around and try get software to do something the developers could not have foreseen.

[u/[deleted]]

Speed running is the most degenerate act that humans have come up with.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b56N17d4WnM