[Speedrun] Black & White Any% in

(Note about Black & White 2 speedruns): StickmanPrime recently picked up B&W2, this is his fastest time as of 23-06-2021: • Black and White 2 Spee... -- Be sure to check out his channel if you're a fan of the sequel.
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Sub 50! Very happy I managed to break this milestone.
So, where did the nearly five minutes of time save come from compared to the last PB? After some further testing it became apparent how the timer in land three actually works, and so previously focusing on Lethys' villages wasn't the correct order as not only his outwards village doesn't factor in, freeing the creature as quickly as possible is also the trigger that starts the timer. Things get slightly harder now due to variance; in an ideal scenario the invincible man burning ignites all of Lethys' villagers from the village that matters; under worse circumstances, it starts raining above the temple (yes, this actually happens, though seemingly not that often) or Lethys starts rebuilding or the targeting itself doesn't prioritize the right villagers under his control, etc. The point is, the less hoops the game forces you to jump through, the fewer Lightning miracles you could transfer over as well as decrease game speed less and save time on not slowing down the fixed timer. Technically you could clear land three with two miracles - I brought over four for safety. So, that's an idea for you what optimization with splits could look like in this boring speedrun.
In addition to the land three route changing, I was also mistaken about the trigger for the cutscene following the opening one in land four thinking there was enough time to build some scaffolds, which turned out to be false. What I was basically doing was feeding trees to the workshop while the creature was just standing there. With all the newfound land three variance, the next best thing was to figure out how to carry over Khazar's scaffolds without causing the game to crash (the initial reason I gave up on them - and the harsh time window), which was fortunately doable. Overall land four mostly lets you execute at your own pace so long as you finish up before your creature reaches its destination.
Could the game be pushed into sub-48 territory? I lost like fifteen seconds just from searching where my scaffolds landed because the game is fun in that way. I suppose another fifteen could be shaved off with less indecision and tighter execution - not to mention annoying misclicks. I thought the creature fights were surprisingly generous, and land three seemed decent. I guess the only way to answer would be adding splits, but it's probably for the best to leave the game be than let its massive downtime chip away at own sanity.

[@gregoryfarias5710]

You're a legend, this has fulfilled my 20 years of wondering how the game ends. May the gods bless you.

[@CommonSimpleton]

Thanks! :) The game has an adorable credits sequence, so I made sure to include everything.

[@CallMeMimi27]

loooooool same. never managed to play beyond land 3. for a 2001 game its so complex and its hard to grasp its concepts

[@rancidrandis]

This pedestal is a miracle dispenser

[@RealBradMiller]

There's no way to know.

[@ghfellan94]

What does it do?

[@rancidrandis]

@@ghfellan94 in truth I have no clue, but i would like to believe it makes various types of hoagies and strombolis

[@vulpixsi]

It charges up and generates one-shot miracles

[@rancidrandis]

Bam!!!! Bet you didn't expect a response! Imma turn into that of a cabbage!!!!

[@Mistpirit]

so glad theres a speedrun of this game, you're doing gods work

[@rancidrandis]

Ahagaga I get it

[@Mistpirit]

@@rancidrandis :^)

[@rancidrandis]

@@Mistpirit mama say mama sa mama kusa

[@RealBradMiller]

Literally.

[@xDrTomx]

A heavenly pun

[@charlieholloway627]

BEST opening scene of any game, ever. A god being born!

[@waguco]

Khazar: WAIT! This is MY territory. You: OUR territory

[@CommonSimpleton]

RIP, khaz. Peter should've let us save his turtle.

[@marleine]

such a funny game to speedrun. glad i've found my people

[@phatbui9347]

I hate how this game was so underrated, an awesome game such as this deserves more

[@CallMeMimi27]

it held a Guinness record for like a decade for best game AI or something i think. EA ruined it

[@skipjack02]

This game was in no way underrated. everybody loved it

[@Aggravath]

Ofcourse EA ruined it, that's what they are famous for!

[@zalxder]

6:50 don't get in the way of gods plan

[@boringman5293]

metacritic 90 not underated, people just to either to young or stupid to not know this game

[@AlexGoldhill]

Leader, let's start impressing- So then I started blasting.

[@gabrielmichelson9830]

I used the trick of placing a town center to get the ability to act outside my zone, but I had no idea you could recycle it by breaking it and picking up the scaffold again. I also had no idea you could use the pause function to basically grab anything anywhere. You, Tionic#2, are a glitch pioneer. If a bit evil for slaughtering so many people. But hey: it's hard to argue with success.

[@jamess5125]

what a game! can't believe it's 21 years old. Better times

[@CallMeMimi27]

Matt_ Damon_Aging.jpg fucking 20 years??? god my knees hurt...

[@bilboriches7216]

Still hoping they will make a third series.

[@robertbick986]

This pedestal is a miracle dispenser. It charges up and generates one-shot miracles.

[@Szarko32c]

Loved the game. Life was so much simpler back then.

[@Ov3rshot]

The game aged like fine wine. The AI of the creature is still lightyears ahead anything else ever done in gaming. Especially if you look into it and find out how in depth it actually is.

[@Freedom21stCenturi]

It's just too bad it wasn't really explained that well. I bet most users did not even utilize more than 20% of the AI's true potential.

[@bronzeshield6382]

@@Freedom21stCenturi I certainly didn't. still dont understand this game 🤣

[@CallMeMimi27]

i read somewhere that it held a Guinness record for best AI in a game for a decade

[@everythingpony]

They are braindead

[@insertname5421]

Great work! Learned a lot by watching this run!

[@Ribyum]

Nicely done. Didn't expect to see this one childhood game getting its own speedrun one day. :) Finished it this year for the first time. It's interesting to see it being done quick.

[@CommonSimpleton]

Thanks! It's an oldie, but goodie. Definitely aged very well.

[@Madhijz]

the only winning move is not to pray. I was wondering how it was going to go when the first level took half of the video's time but then the sound of thunder announced that god does drive bys on rival villages. always great to see videos of this unique game.

[@Ellyphant450]

Wow, suddenly remembered this game I played so many years ago! Funny timing you basically just uploaded it. Gonna enjoy this, thank you!

[@Ellyphant450]

You picked the tiger!! This is gonna be great

[@CommonSimpleton]

@@Ellyphant450 Thanks! Yup, it is supposed to be the fastest creature out of the starting three according to the wikis.

[@SarahAltezia]

@@CommonSimpleton That's true, however, you could swap to the Leopard using the silver scroll to the west of the sailor silver scroll. Now I'm not sure if the time lost would be made up in some way, but the Leopard is a fair bit faster than the Tiger. Soo.. maybe the time lost for the swap could be made up in the long run?

[@CommonSimpleton]

@@SarahAltezia I believe Leopard is part of the "dlc" content whose use in speedruns would be questionable. There are also not that many places where the extra speed would make a difference due to some mandatory objectives keeping you busy during the downtime. Tiger is supposed to have the speed of value of 9.5 vs 10 on Wolf / Leopard. Lethys' creature did seem quite fast on several occasions that I can recall, but faster vs fast does not translate to time save all that well - visually it does, and you would be impressed looking at Wolf's speedy jog. But compared to an already quick Tiger, the difference probably wouldn't be more than a measly 10 seconds across the whole run.

[@Arizona9001]

I’ve never progressed further than the 17 minute mark. After that I just play around. Thanks for uploading this, I missed out on so much

[@waffel9101]

Wow boy, your creature battles are on point

[@CommonSimpleton]

Well, at least Sleg wasn't overly aggressive. That last hit against Nems was lucky, but not lucky enough for a sub 49, haha.

[@EvieDoesYouTube]

There was an easter egg in this game where if you made a square wave gesture (up-right-down-right-up-right) on land 1 a red London public phone box appears, and text on the screen says "sorry, the boss made us take this cheat out". But if you listen to the audio files, you can still hear the phone call that was removed from the game: A creepy guy answers the phone and says "Hello, how are you? Don't put your hands down the pants, call me, George!". After that you hear the creators discussing parts of the game's development.

[@Plarx_]

I have wanted to speedrun this for a while, never found a game I've quite enjoyed as much as this one when I was a kid. Did a playthrough a year or so ago and still loved it

[@axeldeeker5644]

Came for pokemon, found something suprisingly entertaining

[@user-vw4xq5lw5l]

Lol me too

[@RealBradMiller]

Welcome to my early teen years. This game is amazing, look up 'Age of Mythology' and 'Impossible Creatures', I was hooked on those as an awkward white boy living in Hawaii during the early 2000's.

[@panchemlon3051]

7:33 ''You can screw'' Sounds like we became a Disciple Breeder.

[@sunsfssb7699]

Wow, I remember playing Black and White when I was young. I never made it past the 4th level.

[@bakihanma4826]

Nice run

[@alfonsomiraglies6093]

So many memories. I would love a new black and white… maybe for VR?

[@RandomDude-bo1lg]

Or a remaster of this. I wish i knew where I could find a functional version to download...

[@Prebound_]

I remember the monkey being the most stubborn to train. Kept throwing or eating my people.

[@AG-ld6rv]

I tried to get this game to work on newer versions of Windows with no luck. I suspect it's due to the Secure Rom mumbo jumbo they infected games with back then. Ended up being bypassed almost instantly with the net result being inconveniencing people who bought the game then and now. IIRC, some setups wouldn't work with the antipiracy measure, and they could only play the game by finding a crack.

[@CommonSimpleton]

Go on the PCGamingWiki and ctrl+F the 1.42 fan patch. It removes the DRM and makes the game playable on modern systems.

[@Tentin.Quarantino]

Thoroughly enjoyed this game back in the day. What’s not to like about being god too a race of potato-people?!

[@Evilgrinn]

I loved this game as a kid, wonder if we ever will be granted a B&W3 or maybe a remastered version

[@drewcopene1083]

My buddy showed me this game like 20 years ago, he had me rolling, and crying on the floor for like 20min as he constantly kept petting and then smacking the large creatures over and over again.

[@S1RD2]

I can remember training my monkey to only eat its own poop

[@rubaiyatshabbir3581]

Thanks to you I found it ..Peter molynux the creator …

[@QuestionableObject]

Speed runnin' is evil work

[@RealBradMiller]

I wish I could edit scripts on windows 7. I'm having some issues getting through the first monologue in land 4, it crashes midway, and I want to shut off the fireballs or the lightning to ease the stress on the PC.

[@thanger2]

Wow, very impressive run! I'm curious how you can reach things so far away from your zone and still pick up items such as here at 40:12 when you grab the women and bring her to the husband. Cool and very fast pace in each land, didn't know this was possible

[@thanger2]

OH you pause the game...that's how wow! LOL

[@CommonSimpleton]

@@thanger2 That and the slow down option if reaching the whole land is the goal. Thank you!

[@gilgameshbebop]

it charges up and generates one-shot miracles

[@RandomDude-bo1lg]

Funfact: Nemesis gave away his old ultra creature for this one. Was your creature even 2 years old at the end.

[@LordEmilous]

Why does throwing a rock at the enemy temple alter advance the story? How does affect his dominion? Nice playthrough btw. I remember I needed to play this game several times to actually beat it long time ago. Also it took me ages to do it ^^

[@V081WLBlue]

Aggghhh This game! Random crashes but till now just reload no problem but now. Was on land 2 and game crashed. On restart it started as if I had not played yet, ie asked if I wanted to skip tutorial, asked if I wanted to start with my last(?) creature. Started a 'new' game skipping tutorial and using my last creature. Went straight into temple and tried to load the latest autosave or even my latest manual save but they cause a crash to desktop. Got a previous save from about 2 hours before crash to load but the creature is back to its starting level i.e. is small and hasn't learnt anything, miracles etc! Help!

[@Akuretaki_Nikolay]

cool !

[@drs8922]

i finally the saw the end.

[@leannerichardson3545]

Is there any way I can play this now on PC (Windows 11) there's nothing close to similar these days 😭

[@sameaster5150]

I miss this game BAD. Why oh why cant we play this today?

[@fonesrphunny7242]

You can, if you spend 10 minutes finding and installing the fan patch

[@fonesrphunny7242]

You can, if you spend 10 minutes finding and installing the fan patch

[@HawkranGeneral]

That is fast omg

[@13luechocobo]

I think you could save about 25 seconds with the golden scroll to land 2. Instead of waiting there for the villager to come out, throw something in. I think anything works, even poop. It should trigger the villager to come out earlier instead of having to waiting for him.

[@CommonSimpleton]

Ouch. Pretty sloppy of me. I've also realized I was already aware of this from casual play. Thanks for pointing it out.

[@13luechocobo]

@@CommonSimpleton No worries. Looking forward to seeing your next attempt.

[@thiagodicarlo1829]

go get some fresh air bro

[@thomastorr1983]

The tutorial for this game is one of the most frustrating tutorials ever.

[@Ed-hh5dp]

I wonder what that pedestal does

[@ColonelClanny]

Now imagine this in 2021... wait...

[@tomaszziomek5219]

Can I still play this game on windows 10? Any ideas where to access it? Great run btw!

[@CommonSimpleton]

Why, thank you. As far as I'm aware the game wasn't officially made playable on modern systems by any company. Look up patch 1.41 to make the game work on Windows 10. You will have to obtain a copy by other means, be it old CDs or through the morally questionable methods.

[@SarahAltezia]

@@CommonSimpleton Actually, 1.41 is obsolete by now, 1.42 has been released by HandsomeMatt, the creator of the 1.41 fan patch, some months ago. However, it seems like he only made it available on the BWFiles Discord.

[@Tarakashka2008]

Hey guys, could anyone please tell me, where can i download this game? mine has some bugs, does not save games..

[@Tarakashka2008]

@Jonny Croxville thank you for reply? maybe you could suggest some patches? I am afraid to install something wrong

[@Tarakashka2008]

@Jonny Croxville thank you so much for the answer! I played this game like 10 years ago and absolutely loved it, but now with changing pc it does not work properly. I really hope that will figure it out :)

[@goldkoepfchen88]

ich habe Tage mit diesem Spiel verbracht, so einfach wäre es gewesen

[@pixelqiwi]

is there any chance of you speedrunning the second game anytime in the future may i ask?

[@CommonSimpleton]

I actually installed it recently, having never played before. Definitely not my kind of game, I absolutely despise the mediocre RTS direction they took it in, haha. But that's just the thing - you don't necessarily need to like the games you want to speedrun. I do have an interest in the "All Silver Scrolls" category for BW1 for now so it'll take a while before I make up my mind on the sequel.

[@pixelqiwi]

@@CommonSimpleton yeah i can understand why the second game isn't quite the charmer for the most people, myself included pretty cool to hear about the all silver scrolls though, kind of excited to see how you'll do it

[@MajorProblem42]

@@pixelqiwi llll

[@martinpiven4464]

how do i play this in 2024? anyone knows?

[@stickmanprime7865]

Black and White 2 Speedrun?

[@Freedom21stCenturi]

At 2x the video play speed the speedrun is only 24 min 30 seconds

[@General_reader]

When it says “speed up time” is this an option in the game or are you simply editing for this video?

[@CommonSimpleton]

Option in the game.

[@V081WLBlue]

@@CommonSimpleton Where? Can't find it!

[@x3Revolt]

I've been messing around on skirmish maps and trying to make my wonders bigger using artifacts - doesnt seem to work.. had 3 of them next to my scaffold and it was still small :( Any hints on that?

[@CommonSimpleton]

I don't think artifacts should affect Wonder size... it should be governed by the sum of belief from a given village, IIRC. They aren't useful in the speedrun, so I don't have much information on that. Edit: Now that I think about it, I'm pretty positive it was the villager count. It's been too long since I played. Sorry.

[@isai3602]

Hola... Los artefactos si funcionan solo deves esperar a que se carguen y deves hacer la maravilla en un lugar despejado sino no crecerá... Pero de verdad funciona y con una sola maravilla puede hacer lo que harías con 10 de tamaño normal

[@jordanlilley6126]

@@CommonSimpleton Artifacts do affect wonder size depending on how charged they are.

[@deadalnix]

is there an explantation of all the tricks used somewhere?

[@CommonSimpleton]

Sadly, no. I don't particularly enjoy commentating over videos, so making a write up would take too long. The run should be largely self-explanatory, though. There's some information in the description regarding the timer on the third land and such.

[@seanlotr]

Watching this in 2023 remember all the memories playing this as a kid. Wish this game was available on steam.

[@CristianooPL]

so basically you had finished land 3 before you finished your temple

[@ferzupoMithos]

It hurts my heart seeing that you have to kill all people for speedrunning :(

[@Prebound_]

I love the option to be evil in games, but I always play as good.

[@siskavard]

Why is the beginning bit sped up?

[@CommonSimpleton]

The game features an option to speed up both interactible gameplay and the cutscenes. I try to do so as soon as there's control. This has to be done repeatedly, as the game resets the speed upon each cutscene sequence triggering.

[@ChrisNachoss]

51:04 what was he trying to do??

[@CommonSimpleton]

Good question. Throughout the story, you are informed the three pieces of Creed grant the power to kill any god, and the plot ordains (without telling the player) it can only be achieved by combining them inside the volcano fires Nemesis' main temple is sitting right by. If I were to wager a guess, I'd say this is a Tolkien reference, but who really knows what mythologies the designers were pulling from.

[@iangpark]

I really wanted to love this game when I was younger but I never got past where you were at about 25:00. My creature, despite me feeding him constantly, kept eating villagers and I couldn't figure out what the hell I was meant to actually do. Combined with the fact that the save file would corrupt constantly, I ended up giving up.

[@MrSmellymonkeyman]

Gotta slap them when they eat a villager. They learn from discipline.

[@charchadonto]

@@MrSmellymonkeyman my ape sure as hell didnt back in the day.., tried everything from one to a few slaps up until complete beatdowns and the bastard kept snacking on villagers on my good god run. Pretty sure i got some evil points for the asskicking i eventually did in sorta desperate efforts to get him to stop eating villagers.

[@MrSmellymonkeyman]

@@charchadonto maybe he was King Kong.

[@FiremansGaming]

Casual holocaust were not authorized they were mandatory & highly encouraged even accidentaly lmao crazy strat influence abuse i remember using throwing the lonely dude when i realized i could do stuff around him

[@CommonSimpleton]

Oh yeah, another runner would move him around before I found a better strat. His cutscene would slow things to a crawl if you made a mistake. Loved how the developers would include these secret crutches to help out.

[@ajventura2423]

Why in the world would you do a speed run of this game? I was doing everything in my power to make it last longer so I could enjoy more of it.

[@CommonSimpleton]

It's a common misconception to think speedrunners only want to beat games as quickly as possible. Some people do because the way they play games changed, and all the power to them, but in most cases a casual playthrough is still warranted. Me, I played this game to death in my formative years, and also wanted to make it last as long as possible during that time. These days, I couldn't be bothered to actually train my creature anything, so when playing casually I just expanded my villages as fast as possible, which quickly crashed the game - or at least you couldn't load that saved game anymore due excess villagers, buildings or who knows what. In this manner, many people find they can't commit to old games in the same way they had done when they were younger. Hence, speedrunning. There are very few games I'd commit to doing actual speedruns of, and most of the time I don't even entertain the idea because I'd grow sick of it. Like it or hate it, but it is what it is, and it's best to accept it as such.

[@thenear1send]

What percentage of this speedrun is tutorials and cutscenes? Lol

[@CommonSimpleton]

Around 20 minutes of tutorial fluff, and then some more tutorial on the second land, yup. Terrible, _terrible_ speedgame. If you're going to see speedruns of these old games, it's because we're driven by nostalgia. It is not easy to find motivation otherwise. Definitely not itching to get back to speedrunning this one again!

[@falzar101]

You choose the Tiger? A very poor choice indeed. Can you speed run as White instead of Black?

[@CommonSimpleton]

It has the highest speed statistic out of the selection that doesn't have to be unlocked.

[@CommonSimpleton]

A category could be made where it is stipulated only "good" actions have to be performed. Unfortunately it is outside my interests for the foreseeable future.

[@ninahinchliffe8559]

😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡

[@monicaleonte8913]

this pedestal is a miracle dispenser