• Emulator: Mupen64 rerecording v2
  • Abuses programming errors
  • Plays at hardest difficulty
  • Takes damage to save time
  • Manipulates luck
Turok 3 is a bloody first-person shooter with indians (native Americans) as main characters. This sequel takes place in kind of futuristic environments, but there's some jungle too. There's not so many dinosaurs as in the prequels, mostly just weird mutants and monsters. This came out late at the N64 era, so I think the programmers were in a hurry because there's a lot of bugs. For example, once when I was playing the game normally, I fell through the ground and died. You can also walk through doors often before they have fully opened.
The game desyncs a lot, so if you TAS it, you have to play back the whole movie from the beginning to be sure that it doesn't desync. You can use fast forward though. Generally it desyncs after less than 30 seconds. I used the 'antidesync' Mupen, but it didn't seem like it desynced less.
Before I actually start the game, I turn off auto-aim to be able to do headshots more easily. I also put on high resolution because it makes the text look better. I use Danielle because she can jump higher and has the grappling hook, so she can take shortcuts which save several minutes. Joseph walks a little faster, but most shortcuts don't work with him. Like in several other N64 FPSs (like Goldeneye), strafing simultaneously while walking forward is faster than just walking forward, so I do that all the time.
There's a lot of small shortcuts (see the video annotations) and a few major sequence breaks. On Chapter 3 for example, you can just jump on top of the dam, instead of proceeding the game normally by collecting pump fuses and filling the dam with water. On chapter 4 there's a way to skip the Warlord miniboss. The biggest sequence break is probably one on chapter 4 which allows me to skip the entire lava section of the level by jumping down from a high place and slowing down my landing with the grapple beam (otherwise you would die). By the way, the beginning of chapter 4 is a remake of the first level on Turok 1.
For more detailed explanations, smaller shortcuts and such, see the annotations on the videos:

Times for the levels:

Chapter 1 7:35 (ingame time is: 6)
Chapter 2 7:32 (ingame time is: 12)
Chapter 3 6:43 (ingame time is: 18)
Chapter 4 6:43 (ingame time is: 24)
Chapter 5 13:10 (ingame time is: 36)
Chapters 5 is twice longer than the others because it's the last level, and I didn't find any major shortcuts, like on level 3 and 4 (btw, the times for 3 and 4 are not a spelling error, they just happened to be the same length). For some reason the ingame time is always much slower (like in Super Metroid for example). The time probably doesn't run in cutscenes, but I doubt that alone wouldn't take away 5 minutes.

Times for bosses

Boss 1: Oblivion Gunship 0:08
Boss 2: The Xiphias 0:21
Boss 3: Opisthor 1:06
Boss 4: Alpha Fireborn 0:06
Boss 5: Oblivion 1:42
Boss 6: Joshua 0:03.3
The shotgun is the most powerful weapon for the earlier bosses. After I get the Razorwind there's a trick you can use to kill the bosses faster than in hell. By aiming the razorwind behind the boss, it can get stuck, so that it razors him to death in just a few seconds. The Oblivion boss fight still takes a lot of time though, because he has to recharge his health and I have to let him attack me a few times before it's possible to do damage to him.
The frame count in the m64 file is slightly wrong. It says that it's 150333 frames, but it actually stops already at 150297 (41:44.95), slightly before the last boss is dead. -

cpadolf: Accepting for publication. OmnipotentEntity: Encoding.


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
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Joined: 8/3/2004
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #2637: nfq's N64 Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion in 41:45.55
Joined: 5/13/2009
Posts: 141
AWESOME! I've been following this for a while. Part 4 is seriously impressive. Thank you especially for the annotations...they definitely kept me interested throughout.
NitroGenesis
He/Him
Editor, Experienced player (556)
Joined: 12/24/2009
Posts: 1873
This run sucked. Now go away. And leave tasvideos alone. <readposttitle>
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
Warepire
He/Him
Editor
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2178
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
Don't really have any input, but it's entertaining enough and some neat shortcuts. Yes vote. Oh... And those annotations where really useful, you would have lost me without them.
Joined: 6/4/2009
Posts: 570
Location: 33°07'41"S, 160°42'04"W
Just watched it all... It is very good! One question, by the way. What happens at 106 of part 4?
Player (146)
Joined: 7/16/2009
Posts: 686
I've played this game enough to know this is sick fast. And the razorwind glitch was simply brilliant. Definitly a yes vote.
Active player (348)
Joined: 3/21/2006
Posts: 940
Location: Toronto, Canada
I voted yes. It was well played and quite entertaining in spite of the game's slow pace. Most of my complaints could simply filed under the "it's the game's fault not the runner's category" so I'll ignore them for now. It's just a shame that the game is in first person and you don't get to SEE all the awesome actions your player character is doing :(
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!) My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(
nfq
Player (94)
Joined: 5/10/2005
Posts: 1204
Thanks for all the comments. I took a few suggested screenshots: http://i44.tinypic.com/2jtshs.jpg This game has pretty cool design, so it's easy to find good ones. I resized them to 320x240, but the game uses 640x480 with the hires mode enabled, so I don't know if the screenshots should be that large too.
Noob Irdoh wrote:
Just watched it all... It is very good! One question, by the way. What happens at 1:06 of part 4?
I turn off the "look spring" so that I can "write" with the minigun. If I have it on when I look up or down, it centralizes all the time. I know I should have turned it off at the beginning when I turned off auto aim, so that I wouldn't need to waste time going to the menu again.
PCachu
He/Him
Joined: 10/1/2009
Posts: 166
You know, you'd kind of expect a weapon that homes in on and drills into the back of an enemy's HEAD, and then EXPLODES, to be a little more reliably fatal. Also, I'd be tempted to call a female lead in a Turok game a Turette, but then you spend the whole playthrough wondering why you're not hearing an endless stream of swearing. Okay, enough jokes. Yes vote, despite the fact that N64 diagonal-FPS runs make my head hurt.
Emulator Coder
Joined: 1/12/2007
Posts: 95
I can't say no to all the tricks used in this run. The glitches and tricks demonstrated(and explained) were very entertaining, and the youtube annotations used didn't ever tempt me to turn them off. It must have taken a hell of a long time to perfect this run, but I wouldn't call it anything less than a stunning success. I get the impression that this will be on the Recommended Movies list on the front page. I hope the encode ends up with a subtitles file that has those explanations in it. They add a lot to the run's entertainment.
Joined: 1/10/2010
Posts: 59
I don't like the game itself, but this run is very entertaining. I particularly love where the first part of the YouTube run stopped. The humor inserted during waiting periods is great as well. Definite yes vote from me. The annotations need to make it into the official encode, though (preferably displayed a little longer, since I didn't finish reading some of them before they disappeared).
Joined: 5/9/2009
Posts: 7
Location: Concord
Definite yes vote. You made a Turok game entertaining to watch. That in itself is an achievement. Excellent TAS though, it was very well thought out.
Joined: 1/30/2006
Posts: 10
I have every single Turok game on the N64 and would eventually like to see TAS for all of them just for the hell of it. Yes Vote ;D
Joined: 5/2/2009
Posts: 656
So, let me get this straight. Most of the shortcuts exist just because... the girl jumps higher? Wow... Yes vote
My first language is not English, so please excuse myself if I write something wrong. I'll do my best do write as cleary as I can, so cope with me here =) (ノಥ益ಥ)ノ
Former player
Joined: 12/5/2007
Posts: 716
Although Turok wasn't really my kind of game, I somehow liked this run. Yes vote.
Joined: 2/26/2007
Posts: 1365
Location: Minnesota
A run that brings shinydoofy back from the dead must be good!
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
Former player
Joined: 12/5/2007
Posts: 716
Actually, that glitched Crash Bandicoot run and the FCEUX GUI on Linux "brought me back" ;)
Joined: 11/25/2009
Posts: 3
Voted meh. Sideways running may save time, but really cuts down on entertainment factor to me.
Joined: 8/13/2005
Posts: 356
Location: Canada
This game is really saved by its great level design, and the TAS is good too... also partly because of the level design, and your abuse of it.
Joined: 4/14/2010
Posts: 146
Location: France
Those shortcuts were awesome : YES Vote.
o_kcin wrote:
Voted meh. Sideways running may save time, but really cuts down on entertainment factor to me.
Though I have to agree with that.
Skilled player (1099)
Joined: 8/26/2006
Posts: 1139
Location: United Kingdom
I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. Good job! Tossing in another yes vote for good measure, although it is already accepted.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
They/Them
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Posts: 15629
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [1509] N64 Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion by nfq in 41:45.55
nfq
Player (94)
Joined: 5/10/2005
Posts: 1204
I downloaded the mkv and noticed that there was no antialiasing used. Shouldn't that always be used for 3D games? "In the case of N64, and 3D games on PSX and Saturn, these extra quality requirements must be met: The anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, and other settings must be at highest possible quality. Neither the edges nor the interiors of polygons must appear jagged." (http://tasvideos.org/EncoderGuidelines.html) The audio is also off-sync on several places.
Publisher
Joined: 4/23/2009
Posts: 1283
Finally saw this. Just curious, wouldn't it be faster to use the grappling hook all the time? Edit: Now watching it in normal speed, I think I can see why you can't do that...
Publisher
Joined: 4/23/2009
Posts: 1283
Here is an HQ Encode (640x480 MP4) as requested by nfq (split into 3 parts due to file size limits on mediafire): http://www.mediafire.com/?rulqzdj877jtj7w http://www.mediafire.com/?f8v2e6db2zdxpkf http://www.mediafire.com/?bgsdb3xzrucr174 Note: It has been anti-aliased and the sound is in sync.