Released in October 2005, Quake 4 picks up where Quake 2 left off. It's another orgy in graphicsand violence, as expected from id and their partners. Some new elements such as vehicles andsquad fighting are added, along with some new weapons. You play as MatthewKane, a member of the elite unit Rhino squad. The human forces are making their final assaulton Stroggos, home planet of the evil strogg race. As Rhino squad is being transferred toStroggos by a dropship, the ship is hit by a missile and crash lands in the middle of abattlezone. Armed with a headache and a blaster Kane begins his long journey to conquer Stroggos.

Timing note: Time stops after each fade to black at the end of a level ends and resumesafter the loading screen disappears. Half a second added per save.

Quake 4 Stroggification Processor

Best time, Private skill: 1:46:06 by Peter 'Kibumbi' Knutsson on 2006-09-05, done in 31 segments.

Part 6: Strogg medical facilities (stroggification). Not much actual playing is done here. The stroggification process is not a cutscene so I can't skip it. If you like watching while a human body is mutilated you might find this part interesting. Part 7: Strogg medical facilities (action part). Quake 4 picks up the story at the beginning of the assault on the Strogg planet. They're a nasty bunch the Strogg, as shown by the very gory Stroggification process(Quake 4 has an 18 rating) that befalls any Marine unlucky enough to be captured. You play Corporal Kane and I'm afraid that fate will befall you, whether you like it or not. The Stroggification process turns former human soldiers into enemies, while humans who didn't make it through the process are dumped into waste areas. An example of this process is Lt. Subverted with Kane, who is turned physically into a Strogg, but his Stroggification process is interrupted before the neurocyte that would erase his humanity is activated.

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Author's comments:

This run was done using version 1.3, which was the latest patch when this run was started.

Thanks to InsaneB4st4rd for various tricks, strategies and shortcuts and route testing. With all the stuff he contributed this is more like a team effort, but I did all the running ;-P

This is my last Quake 4 run on Private skill and finally I got my ultimate revenge on Raven software. They thought they could make this game speedrunner hostile by adding crap like invisible walls and stuff all over the levels, but they never counted with the brute force of the people at SDA. Have at you, you invisible-wall-adding-lamers!

This run is not only faster than the last one because of a bunch of new tricks and shortcuts. My Doom 3 nightmare project gave me a lot of experience in running Doom 3 engine based games, and also to keep the precision even though I'm forced to play at 30 fps while recording. Especially when I strafe jump, which is something I didn't master in the earlier runs. For this run I finally decided to use the autosaves and one segment per level, and no exceptions this time. Thanks to this decision you wont have to watch a lot of boring loading screens and saving/loading. Now, lets see how long it takes for Raven to get a patch out with like 600 single player fixes to prevent people from destroying their precious game even more.

Quake 4 Stroggification Process

• Level 1: Air defense bunker.

  Perfected the strafe jumping and enemy kills to shave a couple of seconds.

• Level 2: Air defense trenches.

  No actual improvement was possible to achieve in this level.

• Level 3: Hangar perimeter.

  Now it starts to get fun. Thanks to the ultra-super-duper-quake4-raper-sequence-break-no.1 (aka the 'Flyer ride') I managed to improve this level with almost 1 minute. As you can probably guess it's harder to pull that thing off than it seems. The trick is to make the crane sequence stall for just the right amount of time, and the secret to do that is something I will let you find out on your own ;-D

• Level 4: Interior hangar.

  A very random level and thanks to better research of how to control/predict the random events I managed to improve this level with over 10 seconds.

• Level 5: MCC landing site.

  This is a very tricky level to play because you have to do precise strafe jumping in very cramped areas. As in many of the other levels the improvement in this level came from better strafe jumping and better shooting.

• Level 6: Operation: Advantage.

  I managed to shave a whole second from this level, feel the power!

• Level 7: Canyon.

  Without doubt the most boring level in the entire game, mostly because around 90% of EVERYTHING that happens in this level is controlled by pre-scripted events and you can't do squat about it. Thanks to some better strafe jumping in the areas where you are in control, especially the first stretch, I managed to knock a few seconds from this level.

• Level 8: Perimeter defense station.

  Even though this is quite a long level I like it, because you see a lot of action in it as well. To be honest I don't know exactly where the improvement comes from in this level, but as usual it is probably a mix of better shooting and jumping, I just can't point out the specific locations.

• Level 9: Aqueducts.

  Thanks to some better understanding of the timed triggers I managed to improve this level by almost 10 seconds.

• Level 10: Aqueducts annex.

  Raven actually helped me improve this level with version 1.3. With previous patch versions you were forced to kill the two harvesters near the end in order to gain entry to the Nexus hub building, in 1.3 that is no longer necessary. Around 17 seconds was knocked off from the time thanks to this.

• Level 11: Nexus hub tunnels.

  I finally discovered a way to skip some of the annoying conversations in this level, too bad it doesn't work in all types of conversations (commlink and console interaction). With this trick and generally better playing this level was improved with almost a minute.

• Level 12: Nexus hub.

  There is also a big change in this level in version 1.3, the Makron now has to reach a certain point before you can injure it and the amount of hits it can take is also higher. This makes the level about 6-9 seconds longer and the grenade launcher is no longer the weapon of choice because I have to reload it, the nailgun is actually the fastest way to kill it now. Thanks to the dialogue skip trick I improved this level with over 20 seconds anyway.

• Level 13: Strogg medical facilities.

  This is a very annoying level to speedrun because you have to sit through that stroggification process every single time you make a new attempt. Thanks to that you are quite dull once you get control over things. In the previous run this was one of the better parts and I only managed to improve it with about 4 seconds, which is pretty good.

• Level 14: Construction zone.

  I bet Raven thought they were clever when they added the insta-kill gas area in the beginning, but not clever enough to make it cover an area big enough to stop a more clever speedrunner. Thanks to this overlooked area it is possible to complete this level without the walker, and that's a really good thing because the walker is SLOW. The bad thing is that once you do this level without the walker its 100% random, and I mean 100%. After a lot of running, swearing and keyboard smashing I improved this level with about 1:29.

• Level 15: Dispersal facility.

  There was a lot more to do in this level than I thought. Thanks to the better route down the stairwell a few seconds were shaved, another few seconds from better playing and then another few seconds from the slide trick in the pipe in the end.

• Level 16: Recomposition center.

  What can I say? This is just a complete humiliation of Raven's so called anti-speedrun system.

• Level 17: Putrification center.

  The only hard thing in this level is to get past the Stroyent quickly, which I managed pretty well. Jumping off the conveyor belt after the checkpoint is actually not a detour, this make the enemies spawn faster so you can kill them faster and in turn unlock the door the faster.

• Level 18: Waste processing facility.

  Here I actually managed to improve the level with a lot more than I had expected would be possible. I also managed to make the boss fight even faster spite the lack of the lightning gun. Unfortunately there is nothing I can do to prevent the technician from repairing my armor, so you will have to endure that.

• Level 19: Operation: Last hope.

  Some optimized strafe jumping allowed me to improve this level slightly.

• Level 20: Data storage terminal.

  There was not very much I could do in this level except luck manipulate the dark matter room to oblivion.

• Level 21: Data storage security.

  Some better strafe jumping, some better shooting and a few more seconds shaved off.

• Level 22: Data storage terminal revisited.

  Another level where Raven added small changes to make it 'impossible' to do stuff you're not supposed to. For example they added invisible walls around that blue beam thing (whatever it is) to make it impossible to cross the bridge before it is fully extended. This change took me like 5 minutes to find a workaround for and shave 3 seconds in the process, simply by doing some crazy strafe jumping between the bars instead of just running across. Raven, you have to try harder than that to stop me! Other than that I just played generally better and optimized, ending with a run about 16 seconds faster than the last one.

• Level 23: Tram hub station.

  A lot of overlooked stuff in this level. Thanks to the new trick with the bridge and the shortcut in the cave I managed to improve this level with over 2 minutes. I really wonder what is missing inside the code for this game since you can use interface panels through walls and other solid objects, or maybe Kane is actually some sort of ghost?

• Level 24: Tram rail.

  Not much to do in this level, enjoy the machinegun action.

• Level 25: Data processing terminal.

  This level turned out to be harder than I thought, because good times are dependant on random things going right. Skipping the first dialogue with Sledge shaved a couple of seconds, other than that it was just better playing. My nailgun bugged out a little at the end but that doesn't matter, Sledge did his one hit kill punch on the last spider. Why do the NPCs always get cool attacks like that, and not the player?

• Level 26: Data processing security.

  In this level I kept a try with a bunch of small misses for one big reason, I never managed to even come close to that time again no matter what I did. This is just one of those mystery runs you encounter now and then in this game. The best I managed after this try was a whole 6 seconds slower.

• Level 27: Data processing terminal revisited.

  Have fun looking at The Guardian, the level was improved with a very impressive 0.2 seconds from last run.

• Level 28: Data networking terminal.

  There isn't very much to play with in this level, the only new thing I managed to find was to get across the bridge without extending it. That improved the time of this level with around 5 seconds.

• Level 29: Data networking security.

  The only thing I knew I could improve in this level was the fight with the Tower Guardian. And no, the stall is not some accidental lucky strike, I know exactly what I'm doing and I can pull that off again and again.

• Level 30: Nexus core.

  This level was very hard to improve, like many other levels the good results are dependant on random events. After lots of testing I managed to skip riding inside the elevator, which shaved a lot of time, and I also improved the battle room with a few more seconds. The elevator stall was one of those tricks that made me laugh hysterically when I pulled it off for the first time, a true 'Haha Raven, now I got you!' moment. During the slow elevator where enemies come jumping in I also got my revenge on the missed railgun shot in level 26.

• Level 31: The Nexus.

  There is not much to say about this level, actually. The seemingly weird strafe jumping in the start is needed because I need those lightning coils really bad for the new strategy. It is actually possible to stall the Makron just like I stalled the Tower Guardian, but the stall doesn't do any damage at all to the Makron for some weird reason, so therefore I didn't bother to use it.

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