I recently heard of a program called AutoHotkey, which automates keyboard controls, mouse movement, and program shortcuts, making it ideal to create a perfect speedrun of HRM with desirable command organization, command inputs, elevator navigation, and cutscene skipping. I have thought of this when I was wondering how to skip dialogues rapidly when going into a new year, and I found that using an auto-clicker makes it seamless, so I figured that using automation could make running HRM much faster.

However, this is obviously going to be a problem in breaking records, as people can use automation to cheese their way through the game to score a near-difficult record. I’m interested in learning AutoHotkey or at least using an auto-clicker to create a tool-assisted run of HRM to better my world record since last year, but if I managed to break my record to inhuman times, nobody would have a shot of breaking my hypothetical new record.

My suggestion is consider creating new secondary categories covering tool-assisted runs, “No Paste TAS” and “Paste TAS,” which are variations of the respective categories that rather allow using automated programs such as keyboard controls, mouse movement and clicking, and program management. To clarify with the use of rather in the previous sentence, “No Paste” and “Paste” should prohibit using any form of automation in speedrunning. You are free to choose what kind of scripts are allowed, such as only allowing scripts that control the keyboard and mouse, not program management such as closing and opening HRM automatically in the background.

In these new categories, a clause must be added to clarify using automation is allowed. “You are allowed to use scripts to automatically control the keyboard and mouse.”

Similarly, “No Paste” and “Paste” should clarify the prohibition of automation. “You AREN’T allowed to use scripts to automatically control the keyboard and mouse.”

With these clauses, you should change both of them depending on what scripts are allowed. If you aren’t considering tool-assisted runs of this game, you can clarify that using automation isn’t allowed. “Using programs to automatically control the keyboard and mouse isn’t allowed.”

I also made this thread to notify about save file mutation, where people can overwrite the file housing the contents of a person’s employee cards, allowing them to skip years and have premade solutions, so I recommend a small extension to one of the rules making it clear that save file editing is considered cheating. The file in question is profiles.bin, which you can find according to the developers’ website. http://tomorrowcorporation.com/faq#HumanResourceMachine

Speaking of cheat codes, looking back at the general rules of runs submitted to this website at large, they stated that cheat codes are prohibited unless the leaderboard permits as such, which is something that I, admittedly, never took a look at until now. My bad!!

Anyway, if you want to remain that cheating clause, I recommend including profile editing. “Cheating is never allowed, like using cheat codes, including one that’s used to unlock access to all years, and editing and overwriting save files. Exiting out of the game, however, is allowed.”

If you want to consider removing cheat codes from the clarification, you may want to rewrite it. “Editing and overwriting save files is considered cheating. Exiting out the game, however, is allowed.”

If it isn’t allowed, I perhaps still consider using AutoHotkey for HRM speedrunning for fun; while I may make a reply to this thread, I won't be submitting any runs of that kind.

I'll edit the rules when I can to explicitly mention that both macros/autoHotKey and savefile editing are banned from runs. Savefile editing being banned is kind of obvious, but macro is banned too due to this site being the center of almost only RTA runs. For TAS runs, there's TASVideos already. Thanks for posting your findings, I hope everyone is okay with these decisions.

Thanks for the response, as well mentioning TASVideos! I might take a look at the website. Perhaps I can look into making some tool-assisted HRM runs.