Any% Speedrun in

Still plenty of timesave to be had, might continue the grind? The body block at Into the Valley was pretty funny
Watch live at / o_circles
Stream audio at • Any% Speedrun in 24:29...
88661 frames @ 60fps = 24m 37s 41f RTA

[@placeholdername3206]

I played this game so much as a kid in both singleplayer and multiplayer. The levels were massive, and they really nailed that Star Wars atmosphere

[@ocircles738]

Yeah, 100%. The entire Jedi Knight series did an awesome job-- sound, levels, models etc. Multiplayer is still well and alive by the way, got some really old names from GameSpy era hanging around and some newer people. It's pretty intense watching Full Force matches; they have every single resource timed in their route and then they'll just nab you with the choke into secondary fire lightsaber. Personally I like force 2 best since you can still go fast and do cool stuff but the meta is more weapon focused. Although everyone is in the US so I just have massive ping on the rare occasion that I'm up late enough to play (also I suck, but I blame ping and timezones lol)

[@Taydrum]

"How about a lift Jan?" "Better ma-" "Where is that Jan?"

[@RandomEngy]

JK speedrunning has really evolved since I've been active. Good job. Lot of new timesavers in there, and single segment to boot.

[@KenshinMizuhara]

Hey man, your run has always been one of my favorite runs to watch, particularly the commentary one, I enjoyed learning all the quirks and strange things about the game through it. I'm no speedrunner but I definitely tried a thing or two that y'all did in that run on my own and had a lot of fun with it. And you bet I was comparing this run to y'alls the entire time. Really loved actually noticing the timesavers and whatnot, usually I don't get that too into particulars of runs, but this was great to see thanks to the info from the commentary video. Cheers.

[@duncanbotchlet4902]

Hey, I really loved your run with cabbage, it was what got me into completing levels that I didn't like as fast as possible and I liked just playing around a bit. Thank you for your contribution to my childhood, I have watched it many many times

[@MrMerildoll]

They do say the dark side is quicker, easier, more seductive. Well done.

[@JamesCarmichael]

Well done bro. That was thrilling to watch.

[@wugzi9260]

Love too see an awesome speedrun on a game I spent way too much time playing as a kid

[@ocircles738]

Was about to say that there is no such thing as too much when it comes to JK but then I remembered all the 24h+ sessions😅

[@Geetarit]

This is clean af dude

[@faccafromklepp]

incredible cosmos! what a great speedrun man, well done!

[@MorKsQC]

Wow, JK has come a long way. Makes me want to get back into it. Great job O Circles :)

[@aweemonkey]

“Stop that Jed… oh, he’s gone”.

[@ExplodingCabbage]

Nice work. Cool to see some new tricks I didn't know about! On level 6, at 8:43, is that a failed trick I see? Looks like you're trying to jump straight into the top floor of the building without taking the stairs. I don't think we knew that was possible. Awesome execution on level 12. Engy's execution already impressed me but I think, pretty much through cleaner execution alone, you beat our time by a couple of seconds. And it's not even a segmented run! How on earth does the trick where you bring down the forcefield with your rail gun on level 13 work?! Cool to see the throw spam on Maw. :) I posted a vid of that trick way back in the day, but it never made the cut in our run because we went lightside. It's fun. Does the repeater spam on level 15 serve a purpose? Or is it to help you time things? Or are you just having fun? Lightning spam on Yun2 I did NOT know about (having never explored darkside paths much); that's ALSO very cool. On level 17, I would think that doing a curved force jump around the mountainside at the beginning is better than hitting the first switch? If I remember right, I managed to pull that off in my testing, and we only left it out of the final run as part of Engy's careful preservation of force energy (which gets complicated with Protection in the mix)... but since you're dark, you don't need to care so much about force energy. Maybe it's too hard to execute, though? Man, I wish we could explosive-boost ourselves up to higher speeds when we're running through the air current at 20:21. It's frustrating to watch. :P If I remember right, the problem was that explosives boost you off the ground and make you lose your movement acceleration and so get blown back... but I wonder if we ever tested detonating them high on the wall to avoid that. Maybe a secondary sequencer planted on a wall while running by? I don't remember Engy or I testing that; has anyone else? Seeing darkside strats continues being cool. Lightning on the AT-ST? Throw spam on Boc? Sweet! Overall, great run. Looking forward to seeing anything else you come up with. :)

[@ocircles738]

Thank you for the kind words :D it's awesome that you and Engy still keeping an eye on JK speedrunning; seeing the love for the game is quite heartwarming, honestly. 8:43 is indeed a failed jump! I've been calling it "the segmented jump" since it's pretty tight on force speed 3 and needs a perfect snap jump, but lately I've been getting it with decent consistency in runs so it's worked its way in there. There's also an alternative to this where you use a TD to boost up on the roof, but it barely saves any time over stairs since it takes forever to equip TDs there, and then you need to cook it for a bit + slow down so that you don't run away from the explosion, so the time loss is massive if you miss it. I have absolutely no clue what's up with the force field on level 13, it doesn't work on literally any other force field in the game :') was working on alternate strats for getting around the force field and out of frustration I randomly shot the force field with a secondary fire rail det, and boom-- force field gone. I was so shocked I couldn't even laugh. Turns out sequencers also work, so there's some issue with things that stick to it..? The level 15 repeater spam is to waste power cells so that on level 17, you start with the rail detonator equipped instead of concussion rifle. During the first few seconds at the start of a level you're actually invulnerable, so this allows you to do a rail det boost out of the elevator without taking any damage. Really nice for a level like this, where the resource route is incredibly important. On that note, this rail det boost makes the curved force jump a bit slower than it'd normally be since it takes a while to equip concussion rifle again after shooting since you need the recoil from it to make the jump, iirc. The jump also saves a surprisingly small amount of time to begin with, something like 3s, and so I skip it because it's really hard to pull off outside of practice. Maybe one day ;) but you also have to factor in shields! If you're doing this jump, picking up extra shields before the second elevator would be required for doing all the boosts. I'm picking these up right now anyway for consistency, but if we're talking optimal stuff like this curved jump, you'd probably end up only saving like a second from the extra shield pickup. I have messed around a bit with explosives at 20:21, but no matter how I do it I can only manage to get extremely small boosts. If you run in with max health/shields and throw down as many TDs as is possible without dying, you only save like maybe 0.2s tops. Maybe there's some way to get bigger boosts, but you're always very low on health/shields here so it's probably better to conserve what you have for one last conc boost in the elevator. This run I got kind of owned by the officers there so I wasn't able to do that boost, but with the route I do you can pretty much always do it. The AT-ST lightning is supposed to be a lot faster than what you saw here. Was getting nervous at this point and somehow ended up throwing a secondary fire swing at the door before going in, so the quick kill got kinda ruined. Still, it's nice knowing I still got a couple of seconds of gold to get there and on Ascent, makes running against this end-game a bit less intimidating :) Thanks again! Here's to hoping I can get another PB before I get busy in January 🍺

[@ExplodingCabbage]

@@ocircles738 Thanks for the detailed reply! :) Since I wasn't certain that I could remember the answer correctly myself, I tracked down my post from the planning thread on SDA 9 years ago about the curved mountain jump on level 17. Apparently, there's no need for any kind of rail or conc boost, which matches my memory of the trick. Here's a link: forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/dark_forces_2_jedi_knight_improved_run__level_12_complete_312.html#dark_forces_2_jedi_knight_improved_run__level_12_complete_312 and here's what I wrote there in 2010: > Alright, I'm starting to look at level 17. One new find: it's possible (with quite some difficulty, and with force speed active, but perhaps it'll get easier with practice like some of the other seemingly near-impossible tricks have done.) to skip the switch at the beginning and do a curving force jump around the corner of the mountain instead. I don't know whether it's possible without speed (or without speed but with Protection and a rail charge or concussion blast added in). > > EDIT 2 minutes later: It does get easier with practice. Getting it a few times in every 10 tries now. The trick is to start the jump while travelling as slowly as you can whilst still having enough speed to make the distance. I seriously doubt it's possible without speed though, even with a rail charge thrown into the mix. I have no idea yet how the need to cast speed early if we want to use this affects everything since I've really only just started looking at the level. Based on that quote, MAYBE it's viable for you to include!

[@ocircles738]

Oh yeah you're right, no concussion rifle needed! I retimed it though and now I'm getting only 1.5s timesave, and the extra shield pickups lose about that much time back on average (though it is possible to lose less than half a second with insane execution + good enemy rng, altogether I'd say this strat has ~1.3s save optimally). I'll file it under "desperation strats" along with the level 6 pipe > window jump and level 1 secret > box jump. Very cool, don't think I've ever done this without conc recoil before

[@sam_developer5683]

@@ocircles738 how do you use the use button i keep trying to press r or k and it does not work

[@stuflane1160]

amazing run, GJ

[@AndersonNeo12]

Kyle Katarn, the fastest badass in a galaxy far far away ^^ The movement is so fast and precise, it´s not even possible to comprehend what actually is going on. Just wow, bravo.

[@ocircles738]

Thank you!! I'm rewatching this run right now and honestly it's is kind of unbelievable to even myself that I pulled this off. So many years of work went into perfecting the run all the way back from Ysalamiri's 2014 AGDQ appearance. This game was literally my life for a good while, so now I'm just so glad that I was able to show that to you :)

[@czaroo0888]

Congratulations!!

[@FusionAura232]

4 years later, amazing speedrun, played this a lot and never thought this was possible!

[@ocircles738]

4 years huh.. Soon 9 years since I first picked this up, whew.. Time flies :') hope to see someone beat this some day, there's still time to eek out without implementing absurd strats!

[@BeefCaike]

Awesome! Well done!

[@user-qj8wd1de3d]

Excellent run!

[@starlighter930617]

18:23 Wait, what? :D

[@pinjohnston3706]

Awesome run brother

[@strogg13]

23:55 And it was pretty brutal when you think about it. Before that, I saw him being killed with explosives, but now I will remember this method for a long time.

[@ocircles738]

It's brutal but Boc deserves all of it, an instant death from explosion would be too kind Actually this quick kill is a bit slower (anywhere from 2s to 6s slower vs fastest explosives strat), but because of how the lure works with the explosive strat there's a decent chance that Boc will just go on a picnic and you will lose the run for no reason

[@Alexephone173]

Good game man):)

[@leliondemer]

Very good

[@eliaberhd5554]

Här snackar vi gameplay!

[@eduhazard1654]

wooow, amazing work ...

[@Manson1990]

I can't believe what I've seen here. Original dark forces 2 player... And first time seeing a speedrun 🤣🤣 I can't imagine the amount of hours needs to learn and then do this... Gg

[@ocircles738]

Thanks! 🙂 Got no clue how many hours I put in but I think honestly I'd rather not know; this is by far the one single thing I've put most time into lol

[@snwdn]

Very nice!

[@ocircles738]

Thanks :) there's also a MotS run up that people like much more than this one. It's a lot less optimized, didn't spend nearly as much time on that as I did with JK, but it goes much faster and has more impressive-looking tricks

[@shadowdragon714]

Why is stage 4's TD Water Skip such a bastard? i think thats my most hated jump in the run. lol

[@ocircles738]

Are you fully charging the TD? It's insanely hard if you don't. Btw you can also make a quicksave after fully charging, and then you can open the load menu, press in primary fire and then press enter to reload the save with the fully cooked TD still good to go. It's pretty awkward with normal binds, so I recommend also rebinding enter with some external program (it also lets you save time everywhere from making your loads much faster)

[@faccafromklepp]

did you use the ALT button for crouch?

[@ocircles738]

Nah I use CTRL for crouch, ALT I use for quicksave :)

[@herrdave920]

4:46 Holy shit

[@ocircles738]

That's a trick I'm really proud of having found :) you have... I think 8 seconds from 4:43 to do it all? It's been a while. But when you cross the threshold at that timestamp the elevator cycle begins. Ysalamiri already knew it was theoretically possible, but at the time it was not humanly possible in an RTA setting. What I found out though is that once you throw the secondary fire thermal detonator and save + load, it will no longer count as "yours"-- it'll just be another nade. Meaning that instead of just passing through you, it'll hit you and detonate. So with this I was able to come up with this setup with the double-TD jump to just barely make the cycle. If the TD goes close to the wall, run dead. If it goes to the right it hits an invisible seam and bounces off into nowhere. Run dead. It's very timing specific on how much you "charge" your throw (the longer you hold, the harder you throw) and aim specific. You need dead center. Very cool trick, I remember opening a bottle of champagne after having found it. Was just about a week before new year, but I had to pop it open early for this. It's not all great though.. JK already had this issue with people giving up on learning it because of how hard the second TD jump is on that level, and now I added **another** even harder trick to that which you can't really *not* do. It saves so much time. And this trick takes about two weeks of practice to get consistent at. So yeah, I might have killed JK speedrunning :/ There are only three people, myself included, that I'd say are consistent at this: me, ysalamiri and maxam. It's painful seeing people giving up after struggling with level 2. The rest of the speedrun is so much easier and so much more fun..

[@FATE522]

How are the cutscenes skipped so quickly?

[@ocircles738]

If you mean the live action cutscenes there's an option to disable them in setup > general, but for the in-game cutscenes you get shorter versions of them after going dark side (yun2, boc, jerec). I don't remember the time difference exactly but I think it was 50-something seconds

[@FATE522]

@@ocircles738 thank you for helping me understand :)

[@00McMuffin00]

That thumbnail 🤣

[@00McMuffin00]

@@ocircles738 that's amazing haha

[@ocircles738]

Actually a completely unintentional thumbnail, it just happened to end up that way from the auto-generated ones; since it was a long cutscene I was playing "Café bärs, han är lugn" during the long waiting bit on that level which is a parody of the scene from Sökarna, I did have the audio from it also running on stream but can't here for copyright reasons. But the reason foir it is bc of legendary Swedish speedrunner Fniure who would also play the original scene from Sökarna during a cutscene while speedrunning Majora's Mask-- it's a homage to my retired fellow countryman. He deleted all of his WRs when he wanted to quit so there's no vids anymore, but he was absolutely dominating in that game for years. He was the only one who could beat Ennopp, which is something that I couldn't say for any other MM runner, past and present. Never forget Fniure.

[@Sklounst_Actual]

As someone who isn't familiar with speed running in this game, why kill the little mechanic guy at 14:40? Just for fun?

[@ocircles738]

You can't get around him quickly because going on the slopes will make you fall down and jumping over him is impossible because of the ceiling. It's just another innocent casualty to the reckless hate of speedrunners :(

[@Sklounst_Actual]

@@ocircles738 Hahaha gotcha, another incredible detail that adds up. Thanks!

[@MrDamojak]

On which difficulty did you play?

[@ocircles738]

Easy. The other difficulties loses out on a lot of boosts, particularly on The Lost Disk, and is just a lot slower overall. Not as fun to play.

[@MrDamojak]

@@ocircles738 thx for a quick response. Nice speedrun btw🔥

[@khultarratluhk1849]

why?

[@ClockworkArchon]

"Mom, can I get the Force Unleashed?" "We have the Force Unleashed at home." The Force Unleashed at home 23:28 Still prefer Dark Forces 2 though.