The Official Perfect Dark Elite FAQ

This article has been largely superseded by Settings recommendations for Perfect Dark and Rounding in Perfect Dark at Speedrunwiki.

Contents

General PDE info

What's the PDE, then?

The Perfect Dark Elite is the host of the most accurate and up-to-date rankings for the Nintendo 64 videogame Perfect Dark. While we maintain ranks for almost every aspect of Perfect Dark, we are primarily concerned with getting speed times in the solo missions.

What do the points mean?

At the PDE we have two sets of rankings - time, and points. Though the time rankings present a reasonable idea of who's better than whom, sometimes you can slave away at one level for a one-second improvement - Duel, for instance - and other times only five minutes' work on a tough PA level can cut five minutes off your total time. For this reason, people who are better at PA and SA than the flat speed levels on Agent tend to be ranked higher on the time rankings. So, as an alternative, we use a points system as well, which most people consider more accurate. The world record time for any level is worth 100 points to the person who holds that time. The next best time is worth 97 points. The next one is worth 95. The next is worth 94, the next one 93... from there, it goes down one point at a time to reach zero. People who tie on a particular time get the same number of points. This system is a better indication of your skill as it shows how good you are relative to everyone else.

Your times are all fake! Nobody could do Defection A in 0:06. It takes longer than that to even get to the lift.

All our times are achieved using nothing more than resources available in the game: no cheats, no GameShark. The times are this good mainly due to the Elite's years of work devising new and faster strategies for every single level. Many of them aren't even that hard to pull off once you know how to do them. Strats are available at the links further down and proof in video form for almost all levels can be downloaded from various people via AIM.

What is Licence To Kill (LTK)?

A subsection of the PDE, the LTK league is named after the famous GoldenEye multiplayer mode in which every shot kills. To compete in this league you need to beat levels using LTK settings, which are as follows - Perfect Dark difficulty setting (you must beat the game on PA to unlock this mode), 1000% Enemy Accuracy, 1000% Enemy Damage, 10% Enemy Health. Now every shot kills in solo. Be warned - this league is only for the best of the best.

Before you start going for fast times... (settings recommendations)

Audio

Sound: This should be at maximum. Being able to hear everything that's going on around you is absolutely crucial to the game, especially on Perfect Agent. What if you don't hear the guy yelling "Sound the alarm, she's here!", or the clank of a landing grenade, or the alarm being set off? It's far more important to be able to hear properly than you might think.

Music: Turn this right off. Except at one specific moment in Escape, you don't need the music on. It merely serves to drown out other vital sounds. Ideally you should have no other music playing on your CD either.

Sound Mode: Simply select the option that most reflects the set-up you have at home. However even Stereo sound, if you have it, does help you to hear where things and people are, and will improve your awareness of your surroundings while playing. I don't have any idea how much better PD sounds in Surround sound - but anyway, Mono does for me.

Language Filter: This has no bearing on gameplay. Turn it off if you or people around you might be offended.

Video

Screen Size: If you have a widescreen TV, the widescreen setting is DEFINITELY a must. It allows you about an extra ten degrees' viewing range either side of the screen making awareness of your surroundings that bit easier. Also, when you speed-strafe, your destination will be on-screen, not off it. Very useful. Not so good on normal TVs. NOTE: If you're playing on a PAL game, you will be UNABLE to perform the Deep Sea Agent and Special Agent Farsight tricks while in widescreen mode! You may well need to switch screen settings mid-level.

Ratio: If you switch this from Normal to 16:9 you'll find the images on-screen slightly squashed horizontally. I reckon this could make it of some use when trying to fit the screen to a widescreen telly. Fiddle with this and the last option until you find the best selection.

High-res: Turn this off. The framerate in PD is bad sometimes anyway (especially on Infiltration), but high-res is worse. You don't need it that badly.

Language: Although all the in-game speech is in English, and many of the cues for you to quit the cutscenes depend on people saying certain lines, you should select the language that suits you the best. You'll miss out on the plot for one thing.

2-Player Screen Split: This has no bearing on solo play. But most people reckon Horizontal works best. I tried Vertical once, it just messed with my head.

Alternative Title Screen: Doesn't matter.

Control

Control Style: This is the big one. The two styles most commonly used are 1.1 and 1.2. In the first system you move forward and backward, and turn left and right using the main joystick, and you strafe left and right and look up and down using the C-buttons. In 1.2 you look around with the joystick and move forward and backward and strafe with the C-buttons, much like Turok. 1.2 is by far the most popular, but ExpertGamer64 and Sucram, both in the top five, both use 1.1, and this serves as evidence that neither system is faster than the other. HOWEVER, 1.2 does score a few points over 1.1. With the digital C-buttons it is possible to go from a standing start to top speed faster than pushing the stick. Also, using 1.2 you can turn corners without dropping from top speed. It also makes looking and aiming much easier using just one stick instead of a combination of the stick and C-buttons. However, with 1.2 you can't open doors while on the run, because your right thumb is busy strafing. You don't have this problem with 1.1. If you've grown used to 1.1 you can switch if you like but it messes your head up for a few days, and you end up looking at the floor a lot. But I switched, and I found it was worth it. It's your choice. There are a bunch of other systems you can use - 1.3 and 1.4 are basically 1.1 and 1.2 with the fire and weapon buttons reversed, not good at all because it makes shooting while running MUCH harder. The dual-controller systems are very precise, using the analogue sticks on two pads for control. But there are two big drawbacks. Firstly, once again you can't jump to full speed straight off, you have to push the stick forward. More importantly, hitting the A and B buttons from the position on the stick is very tricky. If you're not sure, stick with 1.1 or 1.2. However, a few people have experimented with 2.x and had some success.

Reverse Pitch: On. This is the default setting - if you change it, it just causes you unnecessary headaches. There is no advantage to turning it off.

Look Ahead: Off. This is important. If you want to strafe along a catwalk firing grenades down at your enemies on ground level, the LAST thing you need is a game that decides you automatically want to look horizontally. Ditto stairs - it responds too slowly and makes aiming manually to shoot at nearby enemies a pain in the neck. Turn it off to give yourself better control over your movement and shooting.

Head Roll: Off. This is also important. If it's turned on, your aim will wander back and forth like it did in Goldeneye. It's not noticeable until you zoom, but when you do it makes aiming harder - and with the sniper rifle it's a nightmare at high zooms. Turning it off is NOT cheating, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Make things easy on yourself.

Auto-Aim: On. On, on, on. On Agent it takes a huge amount of work out of looking and aiming to give you all the more time to concentrate on strafing at high speed. On Perfect it makes precision targeting on your foes that bit easier and less dangerous. On Special it's a combination of the two. Just TRY turning it off for a few levels - your accuracy will plummet and you'll find yourself firing shots blindly at every wall. It's hell. There are only a few moments in the game where you'll want it turned off - these occur when you need to shoot at an inanimate object that is near or behind a human enemy. Turn it off at the time, during the game, when this happens.

Aim Control: Hold. Tapping the button twice to turn on and off wastes about 0.1 seconds every time. And that's enough time for the person you're aiming at to shoot back before you manage to get the head shot, and that could be enough to kill you, OK?

Display

Sight on Screen: On. The manual aiming system is no use if you can't tell where you're aiming, is it?

Always Show Target: On. In Goldeneye you had to learn where the middle of the screen was so that your shots were on target. In PD, though the crosshair is small, your job is made easier by having it visible.

Show Zoom Range: Off. Nobody needs it, it takes up unnecessary screen space.

Ammo on Screen: On. You need this. Timing your reloads accurately and knowing exactly how many bullets you have and how many you need for the next few guards is a crucial skill. Only a fool or a nut would turn this off.

Paintball: Optional. If you dislike gore, or like the colours, or find it makes it easier to see where your shots are going, by all means turn it on. However it doesn't add to the game really.

In-Game Subtitles: On. When speech-skipping, you'll know you got it right if you hear the speech but the text doesn't pop up. You'll know you got it WRONG if you see the text when you pause. Also it makes it simpler to have a visual flag so you know when somebody's talking - often there's so much noise you can't hear anything, right? And many speeches are important, as they feed you your cues to do things - Escape, for example.

Cutscene Subtitles: On, off, doesn't matter. They don't make the screen any smaller, in case you didn't notice.

Show Mission Time: ON!!!! If you only take one bit of advice from this whole FAQ, turn the Mission Timer on. You have no idea how crucial it is to have TTs (target times) for your levels, and how well it lets you know whether you're keeping up or not. You can get TTs to one or even two decimal places if you look fast, and the more accurate the better. TTs are the one thing GE didn't have. You must use this.

Joining and proof information

Do I have to beat the game in if I want to join?

No. You can enter even if you've only done one level on Agent. We welcome anyone and everyone, regardless of how good they are - the whole point of joining is to improve your times. However, please note that beating the whole game on Perfect Agent and earning all the cheats is worth exactly zero points. :)

How do I join?

Don't just post a message saying "Hi, can I join?". Read the "How to join" page and follow the very simple instructions.

Do I need proof?

Not right away. Proof calls are decided on a case-by-case basis, and unless you start getting WRs, or near-WRs, or suddenly achieve a lot of very good times in quick succession, generally we trust people to upload honest times. The whole point is to compete and to see how good we compare against each other, and to improve constantly. It's not a competition to see who can cheat the best. However, if you wish to be ranked on the Proven Elite then obviously you will need proof for all your times, no matter how trivial.

What constitutes good proof?

Photos are no longer considered proof, and scrolling times (a video of all your best times, viewed from the main menu) are also unacceptable for proof of specific levels, since both of these are remarkably easy to forge. A video is the only incontrivertible proof, so when you start getting good times, it is advisable start taping all your runs. Just stick a video in your machine and set it up to record everything you play, just in case. This way, when folks start asking for proof, you won't have to go back and get your records again, this time on tape.

The amount of proof required has no specific guidelines - generally we are more likely to demand proof from a new player than an old veteran who has proved his ability before on other levels. For more info, see the proof page. When you are asked for proof, you will be told what you need to provide.

Even videos can be forged, so in general it's better to send your video to a proof moderator for impartial verification, rather than making and uploading the video publicly yourself.

NOTE: Despite what many people think, saying "I have video proof" does not in itself constitute video proof. If, when asked to provide a video, you are unable to do so, REGARDLESS of the reason, you will be banned until you provide one. This is because people lie. If you are banned unfairly, sorry, buy a VCR, they're dirt cheap.

How do I tape runs?

Plug your N64 into your VCR and find the N64 signal on a spare video channel. Put a tape in, hit record, get your really fast time.

Most good times take many many attempts to get: you can edit your video to just show best times, letting you fit much more on it. You can do this using a second VCR: route the output from the first VCR into the input of the second one.

Level-related / strats

How do you beat the first level in 6 seconds?

Read the Defection For Dummies guide, written by yours truly.

Where can I find speed strategies?

The best way to learn is to watch videos of other people getting fast times, and simply do what they do. There are several tricks that aren't obvious from videos, though: try the-elite.net front page for strats links.

Where can I find strats for level 5?

What's level five? At the PDE we don't tend to use level numbers as such. We name them all as follows:

  1. Defection
  2. Investigation
  3. Extraction
  4. Villa
  5. Chicago
  6. G5
  7. Infiltration
  8. Rescue
  9. Escape
  10. Air Base
  11. AF1
  12. Crash Site / CS
  13. Pelagic 2
  14. Deep Sea
  15. CI
  16. Attack Ship
  17. Skedar / Ruins
  18. MBR
  19. Maian SOS
  20. War
  21. Duel

Most of them are intuitive. It takes a couple of minutes to get used to the dataDyne and Area 51 level names, but after that it all makes perfect sense. Better than numbers, eh?

I finished a level and the timer said 0:59.98, but the end screen showed 1:00! Why does rounding occur?

When you play a level in Perfect Dark, an in-game timer running at a constant 100Hz records your mission time to a hundredth of a second accuracy. The mission timer is constant and never speeds or slows.

If you turn on the Mission Timer option, this time is also displayed in minutes, seconds and hundredths of a second in the lower left corner of your screen. However, the SCREEN does NOT update at 100Hz, but at 30Hz or lower. This means that the time displayed on the screen is frequently NOT the actual mission time, but merely the mission time from the last instant the screen was updated, which can be anything from a thirtieth of a second ago upwards.

As indicated earlier, the framerate in Perfect Dark is variable. Typically, it runs at 30fps but when large numbers of enemies or explosions are onscreen, this can drop dramatically to 10fps or even lower on large levels. It also takes a massive drop at the end of all levels, because this is the moment, by definition, at which the game must load the closing cinema and stats screen.

Suppose we finished in about 0:59 but the level rounded up to 1:00. When you finish a level, here is what happens.

Now suppose the framerate at this point is 10fps, so that the screen updates every 0.1 seconds. The mission timer isn't necessarily exactly on the 0.1 so let's say the frames come at

Level stats screen pops up, with 1:00 the recorded time. However the last time YOU saw onscreen was 0:59.98. You assume the game rounded up, and hurl the controller at the screen in disgust. But it didn't. The SCREEN, thanks to lousy framerates, rounded DOWN. Your time really was 1:00. Blame yourself.

If you finish the level in a low-framerate situation such as an explosion (Chicago A) or a crowd of guards (Infiltration), you will get more drastic rounding than in other situations. Some levels are more notorious than others. You can reduce the amount of rounding that occurs at the end of levels by reducing the amount of stuff onscreen at that moment. This can be done (though only on some levels) by looking at a handy blank wall or the floor. You won't get faster times, but the final frame won't lie to you quite so much.

The Message Board

The PDE message board is not GameFAQs.

Our board is limited to serious discussion of strategies, world records and personal records ONLY. Threads not directly related to these topics are not permitted. Please take them elsewhere. Typical threads you should take elsewhere include:

How to be a good newbie

Though a newcomer to the PDE boards is likely to receive a slating from a number of our anti-newbie brigade, it is possible to make a good first impression and gain at least a little respect from your first post. Basically, you can be a newbie without being a n00b. To do this:

In short, behave like a sensible person. We like sensible people.

PDE Jargon

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