Speed run of American McGee's Alice on easy skill in 39 segments completed on August 17 2005. Available in 320x240, 400x300 and 640x480 versions.
Author's comments: This is my 3rd run through Alice and it's the one I'm most proud of. I started speedrunning Alice back in April (because after Eternal Darkness I needed a new game to run through :p ), but I never expected myself to play this game for so many months. I can say that this run will probably be my last one on this great game. I did what I originally planned to do, which was do a hard setting run and an easy run. I don't know if I'll attempt a new one but surely it won't be any time soon if I'll do one. This run was finished in 12 days which is also weird to me considering this is the best Alice run that I've done. The other 2 runs were an easy mode run (with a time of 1 hour 11 minutes :\ ) and my other hard mode run. The first run I did was really slow and it's ridiculously boring to watch now :p My hard mode run was a big improvement since that run, and also much more entertaining, however, this easy mode run came out because I felt like my run on hard wasn't the best that I was capable of, and since that I wanted to do a pure speedrun this time (and not a run where you need to go fast aswell as taking care of Alice's health) I decided to give easy mode another try. I originally didn't plan to beat Allantois run by much, I was planning to be a few minutes faster. When I saw that my total time was over 6 minutes faster I was surprised :p This run includes many tricks which I didn't use on my hard mode run (if I did used them, I'd easily have a sub 1 hour time), so that you won't feel like your watching just the same run on an easier setting with less enemies. I must say that recording the run was just as hard as doing it. I had a very intense battle with fraps for that damn program to record fluidly without dropping down as far as 5 FPS (which did happened often while trying to record). However, even though the framerate does drop in a few places and it's a bit jumpy in others, the run is still perfectly watchable. Sorry about that. Well, below are my comments on each of the levels. If you're going to watch the run using demos, scroll down to the end where I explain how to use demo playback in Alice.
01: Dementia (0:50.96) -Since this is a small level, not much could be done to save time. I mainly focused on doing a perfect jumping pattern. This level went flawlessly, and since I got less than 51 secs, I'm happy with it.
02: Pandemonium (0:37.34) - Here, like the 1st level, is short and not much can be done. I tried jumping a lot to shave time off. I did a few miscontrols, like slightly bump the pillar in the card guards' area and having a bad quick start placement.
03: Fortress of Doors (0:12.16) - This went well even thought the boojum could have pushed me up a bit faster.
04: Beyond the Wall (1:33.79) -Here I had a really good try. The mistakes I made were that the boojum took a little too long to push me over and there were a few miscontrols.
05: Fortress of Doors II (0:17.47) - I didn't get pushed by the boojum to the skool entrance (making me loose maybe 1-2 secs), but this still went well.
06: Skool Daze (1:36.96) - Here I had a few miscontrols, and for some unknown reason the last book got activated even though I was 5 meters away from it, and the kind little book got me stuck at the last fall, making me loose 2 seconds.
07: Skool's Out (1:39.58) - I always got horrible times on this level. I was lucky to finally get something good. A few miscontrols were the mistakes here.
08: Skool Daze II (0:53.78) - This level went really well. I didn't even have some miscontrols.
09: Pool of Tears (2:50.04) - Here I found a way to almost completely skip all the river section, saving me over a minute. Since this shortcut is a bit glitchy I bumped on some invisible walls, and before that in the cliff at the beginning, I badly grabbed an edge.
10: Hollow Hideaway (0:39.66) - A few miscontrols were done here, like bumping with a BUMP on the floor :p
11: Just Desserts (0:25.12) - Here I figured out that the duchess goes down quicker with the Jackbomb Flamethrower and the Knife, instead of regular Jackbombs. This makes the fight look cooler and saves me a second.
12: Wholly Morel Ground (2:53.50) - All you can do here is start and finish as fast as possible. Since I did that I guess there aren't any mistakes.
13: Dry Landing (0:48.18) - This segment went well until Alice hit one of those walking rock creatures right at the end.
14: Herbaceous Border (2:13.26) - A few miscontrols here and there, but nothing big.
15: Rolling Stones (1:06.00) - All I did here is gain as much speed as possible by jumping. Maybe I could have jumped better in a few places but that's all.
16: Icy Reception (1:12.99) - This level was a bit rusty. I didn't gain much speed after grabbing the ice wand and I gave Alice a headache with the mushroom next to caterpillar (Watch it and you'll see what I mean :p)
17: Fungiferous Flora (0:40.84) - It seems like if you jump right into the carnivorous mushrooms they speed you up. I did that and it saved me a few seconds.
18: Centipede's Sanctum (1:21.95) - Like in my hard mode speedrun, I grabbed the grasshopper tea and saved about 3 seconds for doing so.
19: Caterpillar's Plot (1:04.74) - Here I tried getting blown by all boojums in the right direction. However, the boojums are the most stupid and retarded creatures in the game, so they fly wherever they want and maybe blow you from the opposite side you're supposed to go. Considering that those thick heads make life harder, getting blown by all except one in the right direction was quite good.
20: Pale Realm (0:59.77) - Like in my hard mode run I used the alternative shortcut at the beginning and the faster route at the end. However, I perfected them to make me save more time.
21: Castling (0:35.80) - Unfortunately here I bumped with the white pawn because I was had too much jumping speed to avoid him, but apart from that, it was good.
22: Checkmate in Red (1:16.72) - Here in the first shortcut I jumped to the bridge directly instead to the tower and then onto the bridge. Also, I used the Jackbomb flamethrower at the end instead of the jackbomb. No real reason for it, I thought seeing Alice catch fire made me satisfied for having me restart these segments over and over again :p
23: Mirror Image (2:28.14) - Here I used 2 new tricks I found. One was that when you enter the rotating tube after the mirror maze you can see a platform with a magical mirror and a small red square. Jumping on the red square teleports you to the asylum corridor, so jumping on it BEFORE reaching the corridor saves some time. The other trick was that I found a new way to reach the twins, instead of jumping into the water and drain my health to very low.
24: Crazed Clockwork (0:13.91) - Since this level has a perfect strat already, I limited myself to add a few jumps to shave off some time.
25: About Face (0:58.98) - Here not much can be done to save time, so I just hit the hatter as fast as possible and grabbed the Dead time clock as soon as I could. I also figured out a way to start the battle without picking up the eye staff piece (which I used), while it does not save any time, its enough to distract you from the Cheshire Cat's speech which I must have heard 200 times already :p
26: Burning curiosity (1:48.54) - I tried finding the fastest way across the lava rocks here, aswell as being fast. That saved me some time. Unfortunately I got stuck once on a rock, which costed me a couple seconds. (NOTE: On the first 20 seconds of this level you'll see Alice running bad and skipping frames. This happened because of some BAD slowdowns which occurred while playing, which were also recorded into the demo file, unfortunately)
27: Jabberwock's Lair (1:34.57) - This battle is timed, and the jabberwock won't die even if you pay him. Even after 50 shots from the blunderbuss he's not dead. So here all you can do is start and finish as fast as possible. However, I found out that at the end, if you press ESC when the cutscene starts, you get teleported in front of the eye. However, if you press it before this happens (in other words in the white fading screen) you stay in the same place that you were. So I'll let you guess what happens if you press ESC before the cutscene and I was in the same position where the eye appears
28: Caterpillar's Plot II (0:23.31) - Here I couldn't do much to save time. It went really well. I actually was planning to grab the blunderbuss, but luckily I didn't after that I played queen 1 with the eye staff and figured out the blunderbuss saves *no* time there (as opposed to the 18 seconds from Allantois' run). So for a mere 4 seconds on the Jabberwock II I figured out it was much faster not to grab it.
29: Majestic Maze (0:34.67) - Here I tried jumping as fast as possible. There were a few miscontrols and the boojum shot me at a bad position.
30: Airborne Terror (0:33.95) - This level went well, even thought the boojum could have shot me faster. I jumped across the bridges to save time.
31: Mystifying Madness (0:37.47) - Here I use the same shortcut as my hard mode run. Not much could be done here to save time.
32: Water Logged (1:22.98) - Damn snarks. They are the most annoying creatures in any game I ever played. Thank god you don't see them often. :p This level went well even thought there were a few miscontrols, and maybe I waited a little too long to take the 2nd shortcut. I also thought about using the eye staff to avoid grabbing the ledge, but never put that idea into the run (shame, could have saved some time).
33: Labyrinthine Revenge (1:41.62) - I figured out a way to not having to grab the ledge at the beginning, which allowed me to use the watch later into the level and save more time.
34: Machinations (0:54.50) - Here I found a faster route, which saves about 20 seconds.
35: Royal Rage (0:42.25) - The battle went well. I figured out too that after the jabberwock is dead the invisible wall that blocks the exit isn't there anymore. Therefore, I jumped across skipping the bridge, which saves about 5-10 seconds.
36: Battle Royale (0:52.65) - Here I found a faster way to jump across to finish instead of waiting for the red card guard to blow you over.
37: Ascension (1:22.36) - Here I skipped having to grab the ledge at the start. Apart from that the strat hasn't changed. I didn't skip the cutscene at the end (something that I found out after that I finished the run :S) and I got stuck for a second on the skeleton bridge.
38: Castle Keep (2:23.34) - So many guards that shoot you from every direction. This can get frustrating :p However, I managed to go thought the level quickly without many problems. Mostly some miscontrols were the mistakes.
39: Heart of Darkness (3:54.10) - Both bosses went well and died before I timed them to.
Total Time -- 48:31.15
Have fun, and I hope you'll enjoy the run :)
Demo Playback:
How to get the demos to work Make sure you have the console activated. It's activated through Settings > Game Options. To get the demos to work, paste all the 39 .dm3 files in the "demos" folder inside the "Base" folder in the Alice directory. Then, start up the game, and load any level (or start a new game). Then when in-game, bring up the console using ~ and type in "demo [demo file name]" (e.g. "demo easy1").
Things I'd like to point out before watching
- Black Screens in between levels are loading times
- On every demo except for Easy1, there is a few seconds of extra footage at the beginning. What I Did is load a different level, and then load the actual level being speedrunned to avoid time loss.
- Easy11 includes both Just Desserts and Wholly Morel Ground. The 2 levels were done in a single segment.
- On Easy12, there's the Dry Lading segment and then there's most of the cutscene from Herbaceous Border. That was done so that I wouldn't have to rewatch the cutscene every time that I wanted to redo the segment.
- After the Herbaceous Border segment (Easy13), there's a run of Rolling Stones. Ignore that, it isn't part of the run (Rolling Stone segment is Easy14).
- The segments start when the level begins and end when the game quicksaves on the next level. You can spot quicksaves by the game freezing for a split second.
Having fun with Demos
You can change the camera while playing demos (but note that the camera used in all the video versions was the camera used to play the game. That camera is a bit less than 1/4 to the right of the bar, or in other words, a bit less than 1/4 from the left side of the bar). To do that, go to Settings in the main menu, and then to Game Options. In there you can change the camera distance displayed in the run (for your choice of better viewing, of course).
You can also make the camera rotate around Alice while in-game (not in cutscenes though). So that you can see various things that you can't see while playing with the camera in front (like card guards desperately running after you while I outrun them by a mile :p). To change the camera go to Settings and go to the Controls. Find a control called "Camera Look", and I suggest changing it to Shift Left or Right (because most keys will make the main menu pop up during playback). After you do that, go into the demos, hold Shift and move the mouse. OMG, the camera's rotating! ;)
Playback Problems FAQ
Q: The game crashes to the desktop when I try to load the demos, why is that happening? A: That's happening because your not in-game while loading the demos. Make sure your always in-game when loading demos
Q: I'm in-game, but when I try to load a demo, there's a black screen and then I'm back to the main menu. Why is that? A: That's some sort of playback bug. To fix it, just try playing the demo when you're in a different level. From my experience, Dementia loads any demos.
Q: When I try to load a demo in-game, the game crashes back to the main menu and there is a message on the console that says "ERROR: couldn't open demos/[filename].dm3". How can I fix this? A: That's happening because you either didn't type the file name correctly or the demo isn't in the "demos" folder in the "base" folder. Make sure all the demos are there with correct file names and then try again.
Q: How can I record demos? A: Go in-game, bring up the console and type in "g_syncronousClients 1". That activates demo recording. Then, type in the console "record [filename]", and then you're recording a demo. To stop recording, type in the console "stoprecord".
Credits
Allantois - Thanks a LOT for letting me know of the great tricks that you found. He's responsible for some minor time saving techniques (such as skip 2nd cutscene on Dementia, which I knew about but didn't know how to perform), most Ice Wand shortcuts (and letting me know of Ice wand shortcuts in general) aswell as many other major tricks such as Beyond the Wall (boojum shortcut), Skool Daze II, Hollow Hideaway, Dry Landing, Pale Realm, Checkmate in Red, Burning Curiosity, Airborne Terror, Water Logged, Battle Royale and Castle Keep. I'd probably never have found these tricks myself, so kudos to him for letting me know! :)
Mad Andy - I have found a few things myself too. That includes Pool of Tears, Centipede's Sanctum (Grasshopper tea), Pale Realm alternative routes, the faster route for the 1st shortcut in Checkmate in red, Mirror Image, Crazed Clockwork (yea I know that Allantois used before me, but I already knew about it), Burning Curiosity jumping pattern, Jabberwock's Lair, Mystifying Madness, Labyrinthine Revenge (Another trick that Allantois used first, but I knew about this one too), Machinations, Royal Rage (skip the bridge) and some boss strats (like duchess and the Queen battles) and minor faster jumping patterns.
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