how to skip demo between Engine Core and Cargo Bay in System Shock 2

[66ee38db3acbcAlan001]

Good morning. I am try many trick jumping over suit hazard and suit combat armor using Agility and psi booster but that demo every time appear me. What I am doing wrong ? Please help me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOHHhx1zBhU

[66ee38db3afd2sarge945]

Why not just use cutscene skipper? If you're instead trying to do this in vanilla for a Speedrun then you should stop wasting your life and get some real hobbies instead.

[66ee38db3b333unn_atropos]

There are some speedrun tutorials that show the skip:

Big Jim, at 10:55
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LEf0n3qvHY
https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=5971.msg62965#msg62965

wolvie games, 23;50
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG5GIgrLAaM
https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=8435.msg96864#msg96864

Space Botany, 22:45
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv3J4aonoyQ
https://www.systemshock.org/index.php?topic=9250.msg109651#msg109651

[66ee38db3b49dAlan001]

Thank for reply. I am analyzed linked videos step by step. Differences than I am doing are 1. Naturally Able: Onetime bonus of 8 cyber modules and 2. Game difficulty to impossible. At this moment I am not see more addictive game

[66ee38db3b81bJDoran]

If you're instead trying to do this in vanilla for a Speedrun then you should stop wasting your life and get some real hobbies instead.

That's not fair. Speed-running is a legitimate form of entertainment and/or challenge for some people, and it's certainly the posters right to play this game in that way if he/she likes.

I personally don't see why anyone would repeatedly play the same game (or section of a game) dozens or hundreds (or even thousands, literally) of times, trying to shave a fraction of a second off their record, but so what? I don't see why anyone would climb a mountain, watch sport, listen to jazz, and a million other things, but if others enjoy these things then why not?

[66ee38db3b9d2ZylonBane]

Memo to self: Add hidden "Win Game" button to first level for speedrunners.

[66ee38db3bae3sarge945]

EDIT: This was a huge rant about speedrunning. Not anymore.

EDIT EDIT: Turns out someone responded with quotes, so the whole thing is out there anyway. If people are wanting to talk about it, I guess I should talk about it then. For the complete rant, read the responses below.

[66ee38db3c8fevoodoo47]

Memo to self: Add hidden "Win Game" button to first level for speedrunners.

I've actually already done that (dml), and the absolute record 7 second speedrun video is uploaded somewhere on youtube (by JD I think) to mock all the cheatrunners for the rest of eternity.

[66ee38db3cc47TheHEX]

sarge945
wow that was long. but... no cheat/bug speedrunning is pretty cool

[66ee38db3cd87sarge945]

Yeah I am probably going to delete my initial rant. Not because I don't stand by my opinions, but because ranting about the state of speedrunning probably isn't helpful for the thread, the community, or my image as a forum member.

[66ee38db3d058Pacmikey]

sarge945good man

[66ee38db3d6b8JDoran]

I thought I'd answered this? Mind you, I was posting at work, so maybe I became distracted, and didn't later post it? I'm getting old...

The reason speedrunning is dumb (especially SS2 speedrunning) is because it's so arbitrary. Using a cheat code to give myself full health is forbidden, but dying during a level transition to become immortal is fine, despite these both very clearly being cheats.

Speed running, from the little I know of it, has various difficult rules and classes/styles, and some of them allow you to use engine glitches, and why not, if the rules allow it and the speed runner in question admits to using glitches? That doesn't force anyone else to accept that playthrough as legitimate, if they don't want to.

In a game like SS2 where there's so much depth around build variety and diversity, perfect pacing, and good atmosphere, that's instead all thrown away for the sake of pressing the WASD keys really fast, made even more ridiculous by the fact that you literally cannot die.

Again, so what? They don't tell you how to play the game, so why shouldn't they play the game how they choose, even if to you it seems stupid or unenjoyable.

How utterly disrespectful to the game (and any game really) to degrade it down to such a basic level.

Disrespectful to a computer program? Do you not see how pretentious and stupid that sounds.

Especially if people are then going to pat themselves on the back and talk about how high skill that is while removing everything interesting and difficult about the gameplay.

(Successful) Speed running absolutely does require a very high level of skill. The reflexes and (often) planning and testing and the sheer determination required to overcome the tedium of replaying the same thing over and over and over again must be of a very high standard. I'd argue that the return (the chance of *maybe* setting a new personal, or even a world-wide) record isn't worth even 0.01% of the effort needed to be a speed runner, but others seem to love speed running so good luck to them.

Speedrunning is the most braindead way to play any videogame. Instead of being a test of strategy, skill, counterplay, and understanding mechanics, speedruns are a challenge for who can break the game and mash buttons the fastest.

Right, so you think that speed running System Shock 2 just requires mashing the buttons as fast as possible? Speed runners need to understand the game engine's glitches and how to make use of them, memorize the level layouts and item placements, understand the movement/locations/roaming paths/etc of NPCs, the optimal route through the levels, and so on.  That's a lot of things to learn, and to know well enough that any needed knowledge comes to mind immediately when the speed runner is playing.

Normally, that wouldn't matter much. I don't like it and would be able to move past it. What annoys me is how much publicity and positive press it gets, including being the focus of one of the largest charity events in gaming, despite being utterly boring to watch and taking the spotlight away from more interesting aspects of gaming. It's not fun to watch someone mindlessly cheat their way through a videogame, no matter how fast they are.

I agree, it's not fun to watch, but I'd say that about real life sports too. And the fact that "one of the largest charity events in gaming" is speed running based, shows that many people must enjoy watching it. Otherwise, the event would have single figure views, and be unknown to almost everyone.

[66ee38db3fab5sarge945]

I was kind of hoping the whole thing would settle down, I was probably very foolish to go on a long rant and make this the "anti-speedrunning" thread when the OP is just looking for some help, but since it got a reply, I guess I should answer in kind. So here's my response to the response.

Speed running, from the little I know of it, has various difficult rules and classes/styles, and some of them allow you to use engine glitches, and why not, if the rules allow it and the speed runner in question admits to using glitches? That doesn't force anyone else to accept that playthrough as legitimate, if they don't want to.

Are you saying that attaching official times, and sometimes even prizes, to a certain way of playing a game doesn't legitimize it?

People can think what they want. My issue is with how many people in the gaming community consider any% glitchy speedruns to be legitimate, despite them only being slightly different from outright cheating, which nobody would consider legitimate in a speedrun. It makes no sense to me how the average person in the gaming community can be totally find with someone "bumping" through a wall to get out of bounds, but would automatically consider any speedrun that uses the noclip cheat to be invalid.

This isn't about me demanding any individual play or not play however they want. It's more that I am questioning the absurdity of the consensus within the gaming community at large. Instead of addressing it, most people provide thought-terminating clichés along the lines of "let people enjoy things how they want", as if that somehow resolves my issue or makes the absurdity go away.

Again, so what? They don't tell you how to play the game, so why shouldn't they play the game how they choose, even if to you it seems stupid or unenjoyable.

People can play games how they want. It's the smug attitude of speedrunners I can't stand. Just look how butthurt some speedrunners get when people claim that not trivialising the game by being unvulnerable is stupid and arbitrary. I know ZylonBane and I generally only agree when hell decides to randomly freeze over every so often, but in this case he's absolutely spot on and I agree with him wholeheartedly.

The really ironic part about the linked video is that, what he produced is a speedrun that's actually mildly interesting because it's not just the same bullshit over and over again, most likely because "actually playing the game properly, but fast" isn't covered by any standard speedrunning guide, so the player has to actually adapt and think and be unique, which makes for a far more interesting speedrun overall because he's actually engaging with the game, rather than simply repeating a series of memorized steps. When people stop legitimising how speedrunners arbitrarily break games to succeed, we might actually start seeing some interesting speedruns. Unlikely, but maybe it's possible.

Disrespectful to a computer program? Do you not see how pretentious and stupid that sounds.

Are you saying video games aren't art, or that designers and developers don't spend literal years designing, balancing, and carefully pacing every encounter in a given game? Does it not shit all over that vision to have someone basically break their game apart completely and then compete to see who can break it the fastest? There are some speedruns (like the aforementioned pokemon yellow speedrun) that are literally less than 1 minute long. For a game that took hundreds of thousands of hours to make.

Hmm, doesn't sound so pretentious when you actually sit down and think about it rather than bashing out a response on your phone.

(Successful) Speed running absolutely does require a very high level of skill. The reflexes and (often) planning and testing and the sheer determination required to overcome the tedium of replaying the same thing over and over and over again must be of a very high standard. I'd argue that the return (the chance of *maybe* setting a new personal, or even a world-wide) record isn't worth even 0.01% of the effort needed to be a speed runner, but others seem to love speed running so good luck to them.

*clap clap*, you've now turned not being too bored to continue into a "skill".

Is standing in line at the DMV a skill?

I outright agreed that pressing WASD fast and in the right ways requires a degree of precision and skill. Nobody is arguing that speedrunning requires no skill. My issue was that it removes all the depth and strategy from the game. You've literally taken away all the legitimate challenge and degenerated the entire gameplay experience down to executing the right series of practiced maneuvers in quick succession. If you want to argue that's high-skill, fine, but it's also utterly fucking boring and removes all of the actual skill of the game, only to replace it with utterly mindless rote execution, which is really only skill at the most base level. The sort of thing I could program a computer to do (which, incidentally, is also why so many TAS speedruns are beating world records, to the point where speedrunners had to either ban them or make them a new category. Because a person practicing walking left 5 times on a specific pixel is considered "high skill", but a computer being programmed to do it is not, despite programming a bot arguably requiring significantly more skill, but I digress). It requires skill the same way tying your shoelaces requires skill, and nobody is stupid enough to call tying shoelaces a "high skill activity", despite requiring a reasonable amount of practice and precision. At some point skill expression needs to go beyond the mere mechanical execution and have a cerebral component, otherwise it's essentially mindless movement.

Right, so you think that speed running System Shock 2 just requires mashing the buttons as fast as possible? Speed runners need to understand the game engine's glitches and how to make use of them, memorize the level layouts and item placements, understand the movement/locations/roaming paths/etc of NPCs, the optimal route through the levels, and so on.  That's a lot of things to learn, and to know well enough that any needed knowledge comes to mind immediately when the speed runner is playing.

All of that is headknowledge. Once you remember the right things, executing the speedrun is literally an exercise in mechanically performing the right series of steps. Most speedruns of most games look almost completely identical, except for when someone finds a completely new route that's the fastest, then all the speedruns change to follow that pattern instead.

Yes, there are some people in the speedrunning community who are smart enough to devise clever routes through games. But the vast majority are simply copying existing runs mindlessly, trying to perform the steps faster or repeat segments enough times that they are blessed with good enough RNG to get a microsecond advantage.

This thread is a good example. The OP has done nothing new here. They are trying to learn an established trick that has been around for years, following a standard SS2 speedrunning guide, for a route that has remained unchanged for a very long time. SS2 speedrunning at this point is entirely about executing the correct sequence slightly faster than everyone else. Speedrunners are essentially automatons following a script, that's all.

I agree, it's not fun to watch, but I'd say that about real life sports too. And the fact that "one of the largest charity events in gaming" is speed running based, shows that many people must enjoy watching it. Otherwise, the event would have single figure views, and be unknown to almost everyone.

At least real life sports requires strategy, timing, fitness, and offers a lot of opportunities for counter play. In everything from Cricket to Soccer to Football, there's always a back and forth. A team will try a new strategy and will use it to win games, then new teams will develop counters to their strategy. In some cases one team will simply just be better than the others. Sports may be boring but surely you agree that sport at least has some level of dynamic gameplay to it, strategy, and depth as a result. It's not simply practicing the same thing over and over again ad nauseum trying to be a few microseconds faster than everyone else.

And you're right, speedrunning is popular. There's no accounting for taste, I guess. Millions of people watch cricket every year too, it doesn't mean it's good.

I'm not trying to argue that "Speedrunning is something I personally find boring, therefore it sucks", I'm arguing that it's boring BECAUSE it sucks, and it sucks by it's very core design. Is it possible for speedrunning to theoretically be a very deep, strategic experience? Yeah probably, with the right set of rules in place and games that are dynamic enough to remain interesting. But for a game like SS2 where all the optimal routes have already been found, and 99.99% of speedruns are just people performing the same basic sequence of glitches to finish the game fast, there's nothing interesting or unique. It's simply a bunch of nearly identical robots executing the same sequence to varying degrees of success.

[66ee38db3fd94Valet2]

sarge... You spent an hour explaining to us why you hate speedruns, and it was you who told the guy who asked a certain question to "stop wasting his life and get some real hobbies instead". First of all, it was rude to him. You don't know the answer? Just don't reply then. From now on I'm gonna ignore all your messages because now I see what kind of person you are.

There's a phrase in Russian which covers all those "advices" to stop doing what one person likes and start doing what the other thinks anyone should acceptable. Каждый дрочит так, как хочет.

[66ee38db3fe89sarge945]

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[66ee38db40b6fJDoran]

Sorry, I hadn't seen this post. And the forum software won't automatically show everything I am replying to, presumably because six quotes are too many.

Quote by JDoran:
Speed running, from the little I know of it, has various difficult rules and classes/styles, and some of them allow you to use engine glitches, and why not, if the rules allow it and the speed runner in question admits to using glitches? That doesn't force anyone else to accept that playthrough as legitimate, if they don't want to.

Are you saying that attaching official times, and sometimes even prizes, to a certain way of playing a game doesn't legitimize it?

Not at all. I am saying that if other people want to consider a speed-run, or any other type of non-standard run, as a non-legitimate playthrough of the game, then that is up to them. There might be people, for example, who consider playing System Shock 2 with SCP is somehow not a legitimate way of the playing the game, because "It's not how the game's developers intended it". To me, that would be a stupid, or at least very unnecessary attitude, and one that would result in playing an inferior version of SS2, but if someone genuinely felt that way, then that's up to them.

People can think what they want. My issue is with how many people in the gaming community consider any% glitchy speedruns to be legitimate, despite them only being slightly different from outright cheating, which nobody would consider legitimate in a speedrun. It makes no sense to me how the average person in the gaming community can be totally find with someone "bumping" through a wall to get out of bounds, but would automatically consider any speedrun that uses the noclip cheat to be invalid.

But if people want to allow glitches in the run, then why not? They are open about using the glitches, and aren't claiming to complete the  game using standard methods, so I don't see how it can be classed as 'cheating'. There was a SS2 mod released on this site a while ago that stopped enemies from respawning, and that is definitely cheating of a sort. Do you think that no one should be allowed to use that mod? I'd say it's up to the player (even though I'd say it results in a lesser experience of the game), and I won't complain about anyone using the mod.

This isn't about me demanding any individual play or not play however they want. It's more that I am questioning the absurdity of the consensus within the gaming community at large. Instead of addressing it, most people provide thought-terminating clichés along the lines of "let people enjoy things how they want", as if that somehow resolves my issue or makes the absurdity go away.

But there is no issue, apart from in your mind. Speed-running does NOT harm the game, or the players who don't speed-run the game. No one is forced to speed-run the game, or to watch videos of it. And if it seems stupid or pointless to you, then just ignore it. The world is full of things, video-game related and otherwise, then I don't like or care about, and I just ignore them completely. I will never go to an opera, or read a romantic novel, or learn to ride a uni-cycle, or go pot-holing, or a million other things, and I won't complain about people who do.

In all seriousness, you're starting to sound like Join Ussss. You don't like something, so anyone else who does is somehow wrong. Just live and let live instead.

I can't be bothered copying and pasting anymore (why does the forum software refuse to quote if six quotes are installed in the previous post?), and neither of us will change the other's mind, so let's just agree to disagree and move on, eh?

[66ee38db413d0voodoo47]

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seems to be working ok, you just need to copy the quote tags around and then put the proper text snippets in (that's how I do it, anyway). also yeah, everyone is allowed to like/dislike things, and it does not have to make sense, and it can be blown out of proportions. as long as a certain level of decorum is maintained, sure, blast away.

as far as I'm concerned, if you use anything but your skill to do the run, you are not getting my attention, let alone respect.

[66ee38db41500ZylonBane]

But we've yet to answer the biggest question: Why does OP call a cutscene a "demo"?

[66ee38db41797voodoo47]

we may never know. or care.

[66ee38db4196cChandlermaki]

This thread has a whole lot of "weird old man yells at clouds" energy, thanks for the laugh.

[66ee38db41a76voodoo47]

yes, that's the entire point.

[66ee38db41b72sarge945]

Forums are one of the few places left on the internet where people can truly express themselves, so occasionally some pent-up aggression is going to come out.

[66ee38db41e1bJDoran]

But we've yet to answer the biggest question: Why does OP call a cutscene a "demo"?

Th OP's use of syntax isn't what you'd call common in English speaking countries (though it's still perfectly understandable), it seems to me, so it's not too surprising if he/she uses the wrong term occasionally, especially if the OP used something like google translate to turn a post in his own language into English.

[66ee38db41f13voodoo47]

yes, we know. that's also part of the joke.